Gilded Silence
by Pugna
Summary: Soundwave has been released from the Shadowzone by the Autobots long after the war had finally ended, and peace was returned to Cybertron. In exchange for not being imprisoned elsewhere, he agrees to help out Arcee in finding any who threaten to disrupt the planet's new-found, fragile tranquility. And in their efforts to work together, something more is discovered in the process...
1. Chapter 1: A Unique Proposition

With a start, Soundwave finally awoke. The first thing he noticed upon reactivating was that his entire body was bound to an upright, metal gurney. The second thing he noticed was that his chest felt bare, indicating that Laserbeak was gone.

This boded very poorly.

"Well, he's up now," a familiar, female voice suddenly spoke to his left, prompting him to turn his visored head in its direction. He made out two shapes as his vision adjusted to the bright, white light of room he was in, and upon finally making them out, he was forced to keep himself from trying to shake himself about in what he knew would be a vain effort in breaking from his bonds.

It was a pair of old enemies. Autobots. And not just any Autobots. The first one he recognized was Arcee; a scout he met many times before. The other he quickly saw was Ratchet; an aged medic that he was more than acquainted with from past exploits.

Soundwave's long, skinny limbs briefly struggled with his restraints, but to no avail. Stopping, he found the only action he could truly do was look at the Autobots standing next to him. The last thing the Decepticon could remember was running out of power in the Shadowzone; a negative dimension he had been duped into trapping himself into thanks to these two's human lackeys, and now this.

"Welcome back, Soundwave," Ratchet began after coughing into his servo. "The first thing I would like to say is that the war between Autobots and Decepticons is officially over, as you probably don't know."

Soundwave was silent.

"Listen, Soundwave, the war _is_ over," the medic spoke again, a dozen seconds later. "Your lord, Megatron, has renounced the ways of the Decepticons and exiled himself. Cybertron is at peace. It's been that way for almost a year now."

The Decepticon continued to refrain from replying, but in his head he felt a tang of panic shock through his mind, before ultimately coming to the slightly more comforting conclusion that the Autobot was lying.

"We rescued you from the Shadowzone and awoke you for a special reason. That reason is, well... why don't _you_ tell him, Arcee. It was your idea."

The fem beside him sighed, lifting a data pad in one of her black-tinted hands, and reading over its contents detailing what Soundwave presumed was about him. "Soundwave, we normally would have repaired you and sent you away to a high-security prison, but looking into your history, I've seen that you have no recorded war crimes to speak of, or incriminating evidence telling us anything that would be worth keeping you confined for; save for multiple accounts of spying. But, due to the set of rules following the amnesty act, that wouldn't amass for more than a few orbital cycles of jail time."

Soundwave tilted his head at her words. Arcee's expression tensed up slightly as she began to make her point. "Instead of sending you off to a cell, however, I have devised a plan that includes your full cooperation. The newly-reformed senate of Cybertron has granted me permission to use your skills in my efforts to find any criminals or former Decepticons that have held out until now, and threaten to unhinge the restored peace. In return for your services, you will be allowed an official pardon when I find your uses are at an end."

Arcee's bright, blue eyes looked at the pitch-black visor covering Soundwave's face, and though she could not see it, she could feel that he was thinking over what she had said with a disagreeing mind.

"Do you accept these terms, Soundwave?" she asked, placing a servo onto her hip as Ratchet watched on from where he stood, arms folded over his wide, red-and-white chest. A feeling of pure, burning rage at having this happen to him coursed through Soundwave's mind like a fire, but the utterly unexpressed emotion was quickly doused by a few droplets of pragmatism. Looking back at Arcee and Ratchet, Soundwave finally gave his answer.

He nodded.

It was a single up-and-down movement of the head, and it was almost painfully slow, but what it meant fully conveyed the message to both of the Autobots present.

"Very well, Soundwave. Arcee will fill you in on how things will run between the two of you for now," Ratchet spoke to the Decepticon, before turning to his ally. "You're sure you have him?"

The two-wheeler nodded her blue-and-silver head. "Yes. You may leave now, if you'd like. I can take it from here."

"Alright then," the aged doctor sighed, taking out a scanning device and checking over their prisoner a final time. "He has a clean bill of health. He's all yours."

With a final, confident glance, Ratchet turned about and exited the room, his metal feet vividly clanging on the ground as he left, leaving just Arcee and her charge alone in the medical room together. She stared at Soundwave with open optics, her brow lowered into a semi-glare. The expression she gave him conveyed the same thought he himself was currently experiencing.

This entire matter was going to be nothing but interesting.


	2. Chapter 2: First Mission

His internal timer had told Soundwave that night in their local hemisphere had fallen a mere few hours after awakening. Before then, Arcee had indeed let him know the things he was allowed to know.

The first, and most important thing relayed to the Decepticon, was that the fem had Ratchet plant a small, barely noticeable device on the back of his neck. Its purpose was of a _wonderfully_ insidious design, as Arcee had in her possession a remote device that enabled her to send a powerful jolt of energy to his brain that would instantly shut him down into a state of unconsciousness, should he prove to be untrustworthy or troublesome. Attempting to remove the chip would also result in the same outcome.

The second thing he found out was that Laserbeak had been held prisoner as well, but in another area of the small ship, away from him. Had his servos been free, Soundwave may have actually applauded the Autobot for her foresight in keeping the two apart.

Currently, Soundwave could faintly see part of Arcee's shape in the next room out of the corner of his eye, typing on some sort of computer device in the ship's wall. He decided not to turn his head to her, as she had been repeatedly making quick glances in his direction out of extreme caution, and it would most likely only serve to provoke her full attention if she caught him looking directly at her.

Most bots would have gone mad just lying strapped onto this gurney with nothing to do for hours on end, but Soundwave endured. When he wasn't patiently lying there, doing nothing but preoccupying himself with his thoughts of the near future and how he would somehow deal with this fem that held him in indentured servitude, he was observing his surroundings with roving optics. He _was_ inside of a medical lab, that much he knew so far knew. And in this little lab, there were medical instruments abound. The one he took exceptional interest in was a cord that lied loosely on the ground, connecting to a large, nearby computer. One that could be used in performing a cortical psychic patch, to be precise.

How very interesting...

A sudden, small, scarcely-discernible beeping noise, vastly unlike the normal whirring of minor machinery that he had been hearing constantly, interrupted Soundwave's line of thought. He traced it back to where Arcee stood, and saw her put a finger to the com on the side of her head, silencing the noise. She instantly walked from her current location, talking to the bot on the other end, and into a hallway that lead to where Soundwave predicted was the front of the ship.

After a few minutes transpired, Soundwave felt as the ship began to move. Once it did, he began to hear Arcee's footsteps clank back down the hall in his direction, and the Decepticon's audio receptors were not disappointed when he spotted her thin blue shape. She stopped when she was a few feet from where he was, and simply looked at him.

"There's been a disturbance in a section of Kaon's eastern sector," she spoke. "Someone reported an armed assault, and since we're the only ones close enough, we're going to see what's going on."

" _Kaon_ ," Soundwave repeated part of what Arcee's voice had said, a thin blue line level representing the word's sound briefly appearing over his visor.

"Hmph. I remember Optimus once told me that you were a gladiator in the rings down there," the Autobot huffed, as she went to a nearby terminal and inputted some information into it. Soundwave watched very closely at what she typed. "Seems almost fitting you should come along with me."

As she put in the final information, the clamps around Soundwave's servos, body, and legs disappeared. He proceeded to lift his right arm and feel it in his left servo, feeling the sore appendage from not having moved in, correctly, a long time. He soon left the gurney, and stood up right in front of Arcee, seeing how the blue fem was a great deal smaller than he was. Putting a servo to her side and lifting the small, copper-colored control she had, she held it in a way that allowed the Decepticon to see it.

"Remember, Soundwave, if you go against what I say, I press this," she reminded, before hooking it back up to her side. "Now, let's go. We'll be landing in the next minute."

He slowly nodded. After she motioned for him to go in front of her, Soundwave, though there was a hint - just a hint - of reluctance in his step, did as he was instructed, and his tall, slender figure began to lead the way toward where he presumed the entrance of the ship was.

* * *

The ramp opened up, and Soundwave became the first to exit the craft. Once again reunited with him and attached over his chest was the smaller, drone-like form of Laserbeak, outfitted with the same, obedience-inducing device he wore. Upon taking his first steps out, Soundwave lifted his head, and got a good look at his new surroundings, taking in what he saw with a surprised, yet lightened spark.

It was Kaon. The architecture was very familiar to the Decepticon, having spent most of the beginning of his life around skyscrapers and buildings resembling what he was looking at. It's when he spotted the bustling streets filled with actual _living_ bots that were now before him that he began to think he was looking at some cruel illusion. Cybertron was _alive_ again, and what he saw proved it.

"Sightseeing?" Arcee's voice piped in from beside him. Snapped out of his memory-influenced trance, he turned his head partially to her. She gave off a small smirk that practically radiated with empathy, knowing full well he had been captivated by what he was looking at.

"Come on," she started again in a more serious tone as she broke into a dash forward, from the landing pad the ship was on, and into the streets. Soundwave followed suit, taking a second to look at the small ship he had exited from that they were now leaving. "The bot we're looking for is a male of medium build, sporting a red-and-white paint job, and was said to be either partly covered in energon, or leaking it. He was last seen running south after abandoning a random bot he held at gunpoint, and was documented by the witnesses as acting unstable, and "scared.""

The moment she finished her description, Soundwave let Laserbeak eject from where it rested on his chest, and the minicon quickly took to the sky, searching for the target in question. As they passed by street after street, turn after turn, bot after bot, Soundwave thought back to how that medic, Ratchet, had said that Megatron had given up on the cause he started and fled. He knew that was a lie. The restoration of Cybertron was the truth, as he could now see, but the other was a _lie_.

A ring suddenly went out, and a new image appeared on the corner of his screen-like visor. Arcee apparently heard it was well, judging from how her head tilted toward him.

"Did your minicon find something?" she asked, as both stopped in their tracks, and she turned to fully look at him. Looking to her so she could get a look as well, he allowed the image to expand, and his visor lit up, displaying what Laserbeak was seeing. What the two saw, running through a crowd from a bird's-eye view, was a bot of a red-and-white coloration, matching the description they sought.

"That's him," Arcee confirmed, noticing his scared, if not downright fearful complexion as the mech pushed his way through the crowd. "Where's he at?"

The Decepticon's visor went black once more, and he turned to his left, pointing down a nearby alleyway that lead to yet another street. Without speaking, as per the usual, he sprang into a sudden dash down in the direction he had pointed to, catching Arcee off-guard.

Seeing how he was already well ahead of her within a few, short seconds, and while he looked like he went utterly pell-mell in his haste to find their target, Soundwave was skillfully avoiding any pedestrians that happened to be in his way. Arcee sprinted forward as well, transforming into her smaller vehicle form and racing after him in the process in an effort to catch up before she could lose her charge.

* * *

 **Author's notes:** Reviews are appreciated, if you can spare them. I just want to know what is good, and what needs improvement on.


	3. Chapter 3: The Awful Truth

Upon catching up to his purple glow-outlined shape, Arcee and Soundwave continued to sprint through the streets of Kaon, avoiding passing pedestrians as best as they could. After another vague minute had passed, Soundwave suddenly stopped in his tracks, prompting Arcee to do the same, transforming from her motorcycle form in the process.

Before she could ask, a series of quick, repetitive, shrill noises went out through the air above, signalling Laserbeak's return. The minicon steadily flew down, and latched itself onto its master's chest.

"Where is he now?" the fem asked. Soundwave responded by letting a mini-map appear on his visor's screen, pointing out where she needed to go.

"Soundwave, try to circle around him while I get his attention. Remember, if you see the chance to take him down, do it," she ordered. Soundwave nodded, before running off, disappearing from sight. Arcee ran down the nearby street as the map had instructed, and turned into an alleyway.

The moment she made that turn, Arcee came face-to-face with her quarry, who sat huddled in the corner of the dead end, clutching his wounded side. The moment he saw Arcee, he jumped to his feet and extended a blaster from his arm.

"You! Y-you're working for the Dead... Dead... Dead-guy, aren't you?" he inquired, his voice filled with panic, as Arcee noticed a stream of energon drip from his mouth. "Stay away!"

""Dead-guy?" Who in Primus are you talking about?" Arcee asked back, taking small steps forward as she tried to reason with him, her own blasters extended in defense.

"I... I don't know his full name!" he shouted. "But I _know_ you're with him! And if you're with him, he sent you and that other guy to offline me! You can't have me, you hear?!"

"Other guy? My name is Arcee, and I'm an Autobot in charge of keeping the peace."

"You're an Autobot? I... I... stay back!" the mech shouted once more, pointing his weapon back at Arcee again. She stopped and decided to put her weapons away, raising her hands in a gesture of peace, yet more than ready to dodge, should he attempt to fire at her.

"I'm not here to hurt you. Please, I received a report a few minutes ago telling me about how you "held a bot at gunpoint," and then fled the scene after throwing him away. Why?"

"B-because I thought I c-could use him as a shield against he b-bot chasing me, but when I saw he was gone, I let him go and ran."

"What's your name?"

"Dr-Dropshot," he replied.

"Listen, Dropshot. If you put your blaster away and come quietly, I can take you to get some aid, and clear this up. My ship is just a few blocks down from here."

As she finished her sentence, Arcee's blue optics looked upward as the sight of a snake-like appendage caught her eye. She came to the quick realization it was one of Soundwave's tentacles. Sure enough, upon looking up further, she saw Soundwave standing atop the building just above where Dropshot was cornered in front of.

"Y-you _are_ an Autobot, aren't you?" he spoke again as Arcee's eyes returned to him, looking as if he was lowering his guard. The mech was utterly oblivious to the rapidly-approaching appendage that was now right next to him. "O-okay, I... I trust you. I'm just going t-"

A piercing cry was suddenly emitted from the bot as the tentacle latched onto his back like a leech and shocked him violently, sending out a small wave of blue sparks. Once it was done, the tentacle retracted back to its owner, and Dropshot collapsed onto the metal ground. Soundwave hopped from his perch and walked up to the downed bot, as Arcee did the same, shooting him a frustrated and angered look.

"You didn't have to do that. He was about to surrender," Arcee said in a partially scolding tone. Soundwave only looked at her, before picking the mech up and hoisting him over his shoulder.

" _Remember, if you see the chance to take him down, do it,_ " the Decepticon played back as he walked pass the smaller fem. Despite the fact that it wasn't even his own voice doing the talking, Arcee could sense the former communications officer was trying to mock, or at the very least taunt her. Sighing, she started to follow him back to the ship.

* * *

Soundwave was placed on the gurney once more and shackled in when he and Arcee had arrived back at the ship. Laserbeak had also been returned to his prison, away from him. Before that though, Dropshot was delivered to Kaon's prime police hub, where medical personnel quickly went to work to patch him up. In his all-too-literal shocked state, he was unable to properly detail Arcee on what had happened to him, so she and Soundwave allowed the local authorities to take it from there, and came back to the ship; the _Cliffside_ , as the Decepticon had now found out the spacefaring vessel's name was.

He waited in silence as two hours passed by, and it became the first hour of morning, according to his internal clock. Arcee did not return from where she was last seen entering, and the entire vessel had entered a hushed state, indicating that the fem was powered down for the night.

Knowing she was fully out of it, Soundwave made his move at long last. Looking down to his abdomen, he slowly and quietly extended one of his claw-tipped tentacles, carefully directing and maneuvering it for the longest of time until it had finally squeezed out of the clamp it was trapped under. The thin, tube-like appendage, a faint, purple glow racing down its side from the lights that adorned it, cautiously made its way to the nearby terminal, uttering not a sound on its journey.

Playing back the footage he had secretly taken of Arcee inputting the code to free him of his bonds, Soundwave used his tentacle to start typing into the machine's keyboard, relaying all that he had seen the Autobot put in. A few moments later, he felt a wave of relief wash over himself as the shackles over him vanished, releasing him.

Now free, he lifted himself up, and noiselessly stepped onto the ground of the ship. Before he made his escape though, he wanted _answers_. He had spent the last year (or so the Autobots had told him,) trapped in that subdimensional hell of the Shadowzone, and knew next to nothing about what went on now, save for what Arcee and Ratchet claimed. Looking down, he bent over and scooped up the lengthy nearby cable connecting to the computer, and confirmed that it was the kind used in performing a cortical psychic patch.

He knew much more than a thing-or-two on how to properly use the device, thanks to observing Shockwave run his tests. Holding it firmly in one of his hand's long fingers, he slowly crept through the ship to what he now knew was Arcee's room, emitting as much sound to rival pure silence itself in the process. Reaching the door, he opened the sliding entrance up, and peered in.

There Arcee slept, powered down in a berth sticking from the wall; the bed itself much too big for a bot of her size, but used for its designated purpose nonetheless. Soundwave walked forward, and just as the Autobot's eyes finally started to groggily open at the feeling of no longer being alone, the Decepticon was already upon her.

"S- _Soundwa-?!_ " Arcee tried to shout, as she fully awoke in alarm before the Decepticon she attempted to name shot his free servo out and clamped it over her mouth. Struggling against his superior strength with muffled growling, she tried to put her hands down to where she still kept the restraining device, but before she could reach it, both of Soundwave's tentacles had already grabbed them and pinned them onto the berth she lied upon, holding them in place.

Her legs kicked defiantly and nearly managed to hit him in the midsection, but before she could even get close to escaping, Soundwave lifted the front of her body up just enough, and connected the cord he held to the back of the fem's head. As soon as it touched and an electrical noise went out, Arcee's eyes widened, her expression went blank, and she went completely stiff before falling limp.

With Arcee properly apprehended and the cortical psychic patch primed and ready for use, there was much work to be done...

* * *

Soundwave typed on the computer's monitor, images of Arcee's past flying by on its screen; a sign that the patch was successful. It was simple, really. All he had to do was copy and paste what he found in the Autobot's mind, and now her entire history up until now was relayed for him to see. Uninterested in the majority of it, he simply skipped the senseless claptrap of how she came to be who she was in favor of what happened in the recent past. Soon, he found his first major discovery about Megatron and the Decepticons.

The battle that ended with him trapped in the Shadowzone went shorter than he anticipated, and its outcome angered him into a tranquil, unexpressed fury. Megatron was slain in that battle, as he saw through Arcee's eyes; impaled through the chest by the Star Saber, the weapon itself wielded by that near-worthless soldier, Bumblebee. Upon having his spark snuffed and going offline, Megatron fell from the deck of the Nemesis, and into the earth's atmosphere.

Thinking his theory on how untrustworthy these Autobots were was seemingly proven, Soundwave prepared to sign off from the computer, when something new suddenly came up. Skipping forward a week, he saw Arcee and her allies were now standing on the restored, but almost completely uninhabited Cybertron... with what appeared to Megatron, unbelievable as it was. What the Autobots spoke said that this new figure was Unicron, but as their battle and brawl with him concluded, all of Arcee's thoughts returned to designating him by his master's name. Intrigued, Soundwave let what he believed to be the final scene play out.

" _Your new battle armor will take things to the next level my liege!_ " the nearby Starscream spoke in his usual sycophantic manner, admiring the new, upgraded look their leader bore, as Arcee and nearly all of her comrades watched as well. " _Together we will reunite all Decepticons, and once again grind Cybertron under your mighty heel!_ "

" _No!_ " Megatron suddenly bellowed. A twinge of surprise overtook Soundwave, and he paused the screen when he heard the word his lord spoke. Regaining his unseen composure, he resumed.

" _What? Why?_ " Starscream asked, bringing up the same question Soundwave wanted to speak. Megatron then walked several paces away, and faced Optimus Prime, staring at him with his red eyes for a good few seconds before finally speaking.

" _Because I now know the true meaning of oppression... and have thus lost my taste for inflicting it,_ " he finally said, in a light, but serious voice.

Starscream laughed uneasily. " _You've... clearly been traumatized master. A good power down and a stroll around the smelting pits will put you back in touch with your inner warlord-_ "

" _Enough!_ " Megatron roared, shaking his fist in a way that caused his second-in-command to flinch. From behind the monitor, Soundwave began to visibly tense up and even tremble slightly; showing off more emotion in five seconds than he had previously shown in years, and absolutely dreading what he knew he was now going to hear next. And then Megatron spoke a final time.

 _"The Decepticons are no more, and that is_ final."

* * *

Arcee snapped awake the moment she felt consciousness return to her. Quickly jumping to her feet, she extended her blasters out and pointed them around, only to hear silence respond.

At least, that's what she first heard. Slowly leaving her room and wandering around the ship after noticing a loose cord lying on the floor next to her berth, blasters still extended, she suddenly heard the sound of something being battered against the wall in the distance.

 _Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank._

The echoing noise only grew louder as she neared it. As she slowly turned into where the med lab was, Arcee was startled by what she saw next. There, just a few meters from her, next to a wall, was Soundwave.

 _Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank._

He was banging his forehead against the wall. His long arms were dropped by his side uselessly, and all he was doing was reeling his body back, before bringing it forward, hitting his head again, and again, and again. Arcee was practically in shock from the sight.

"Soundwave?" the two-wheeler inquired in a concerned voice as she lowered her guard. Hesitating from hitting his head against the hull of the ship for a moment, the Decepticon barely turned his now slightly-dented head in her direction, acknowledging her presence before resuming his activity.

" _The Decepticons are no more, and that is_ final. _The Decepticons are no more, and that is_ final. _The Decepticons are no more..._ " he began to recite and repeat as he continued to lightly bludgeon his head, all in the voice Arcee distinctly remembered hearing Megatron use the last time she remembered seeing him on Cybertron's surface, just before he exiled himself.

It was at that moment that it hit Arcee. _He... used the cortical psychic patch on me, and... saw what happened_ , she thought, allowing one of her hands to take form again, instantly going to the back of her head and feeling where the cord was stuck in, the sting it left behind still fresh.

With one blaster still out, just in case, she reached for her restraining device, and looked back at Soundwave. The fem knew she could just knock him out and hook him back up to the gurney, but something kept her from pushing the button. Putting it back onto her hip, she instead slowly approached Soundwave and was about to place a hand on his arm, when the Decepticon finally seemed to stop his self-harming activity, as well as his recording of Megatron's voice.

As if forgetting her completely, Soundwave turned about and walked past Arcee, headed for the gurney without any prompting required. As he lied his body against it, a tentacle shot out and reached for the nearby terminal. Inputting a code into it, the clamps on the gurney activated around his lanky form, and Soundwave retracted his tentacle; its work completed.

Arcee put her other blaster away and simply looked at the motionless Soundwave with confused optics. Her brow then raised as she came to what she noticed felt like an almost _grim_ realization about the Decepticon famously known for his near-fanatical loyalty to Megatron.

Soundwave no longer had a purpose.


	4. Chapter 4: A Broken Vow, a Broken Bot

_Soundwave walked through the halls of one of Cybertron's many buildings, passing by Decepticon soldiers as he walked. He had something on his mind he wished to express with Megatron, and when he reached the end of the wide, large corridor, he pushed open the doors and saw the large bot in question, who stood near the back of the dark room by himself with his servos behind his back; apparently in deep thought. Upon hearing the intrusion, he turned around and let his face lighten up upon seeing his chief communications officer approach._

 _"You wished to speak with me, Soundwave?" his leader asked; Megatron's words carrying their typical deep, commanding tone._

 _"Yes, Lord Megatron," Soundwave replied in his own monotonous, guttural voice. "My lord, you of all the Decepticons above or below me know me best... and for that reason, I wish to ask you for permission to make a vow of silence that shall last until our cause is victorious, or I am upon my deathbed waiting for immediate execution."_

 _Megatron, unmoving for a moment upon registering the words, shook his head as he chuckled soundlessly. "A vow of silence? Soundwave, my greatest communications officer, if you were to take such an oath how would you talk to us? How could you relay any important information we require from one with a position like yours? Silence would be quite the handicap for you indeed..."_

 _"I have other means of communicating, my lord," he responded. "I simply wish to show my devotion to our cause through a way that I can manage in my position. For all we know, it could inspire others to perform further acts of fidelity in your name."_

 _Megatron lowered his head and hummed for a moment. "Very well, Soundwave. I permit you to make this vow," he spoke, a smile forming on his mouth. With his only objective complete, Soundwave bowed his head to his leader in respect, and quietly left the room, never to utter a word for the remainder of the war._

* * *

That vow Soundwave had made eons ago was now null and void. All those millennia spent fervently serving the Decepticon cause, all in single-minded silence, were now rescinded. It was all for nothing. The Decepticon ideals, everything he gained and lost in the pursuit of empowering his cause he had put so much faith into, the near-fanatical willingness to follow Megatron to the pit and back... this ache he felt in his spark must have been the same pain as a theist if they were to have their beliefs shattered before them like a hammer to a mirror.

As Soundwave lied on the gurney, wishing his useless form was atrophying into rust, nearby, Arcee stood in front of the nearby computer monitor, speaking to a friend on the other side.

" _...He did_ WHAT?!" Ratchet cried out on the object's screen.

"He... released himself from his bonds in the night, and used the cortical psychic patch on me while I was recharging," Arcee repeated, pinching the bridge between her eyes with her servo; cringing from having her prediction that he was going to act like this come true.

" _...B-but you managed to escape and capture him again, I see,_ " the medic spoke, looking to the motionless Soundwave from the camera. " _Don't worry, Arcee. I'll just inform Ultra Magnus, and he'll put that Decepticon where he belongs._ "

"You see, that's the thing..." the fem started again, rubbing her arm in an awkward manner. "When this happened, it was... two days ago."

" _TWO DAYS AG- Arcee! Are you suicidal?! What in the Allspark are you thinking in calling me this late?! He could have broken loose again and extinguished your spark in your sleep!_ "

"Ratchet, if you'll calm down and listen, I can explain," she tried to reason. "When I arose after what he had done, I found something of a very peculiar nature."

" _Well, go on ahead then. Explain these "findings._ " _I'm sure I'd just_ love _to hear them._ "

"Ratchet, when I found Soundwave after waking up, he was... off."

" _...What?_ " the old mech asked, flatly.

"He was acting as if his motherboard had blown. Just look at him, Ratchet!" she said again, motioning to the Decepticon behind her. "Soundwave hasn't even attempted to move since that day. He's become practically vegetative. It's almost like he's... lost the urge to go on, if I'm correct in that regard."

" _You said that... you said that he used the cortical psychic patch on you. Do you think he... saw into your memories?_ "

"He saw enough to see Megatron formally say that the Decepticons were no longer a cause in his optics. So, yes." Arcee replied. "And from what I'm seeing now, Soundwave; the only bot that served under Megatron and followed every order he gave to the letter without a nanoscalic care for his own self-being, is obeying this final order, and doesn't know what to do with himself now."

Ratchet put a hand to his face and let out a sigh. " _I know what your tone is suggesting._ _Are you saying you want him to keep working with you? Even after what he did?_ "

"Yes," she replied. "I want to see how it plays out from here."

" _Are you_ sure?" he asked again. Arcee gave him an assuring look, and then nodded.

" _Very well..._ " Ratchet groaned reluctantly. " _I won't inform Ultra Magnus of Soundwave's... "disruption" this one time. But if he so much as puts one bolt out of line..._ "

"I have him now Ratchet. I've changed the code to his locks and by the looks of it, he no longer wishes to escape," she smiled as she prepared to sign off. "I'll see you later."

As the image of Ratchet disappeared from the screen, Arcee turned her attention to Soundwave, and walked up to him. The Decepticon was too busy being caught in his thoughts to even notice her presence.

"Soundwave. Are you listening?" she inquired. He didn't respond in any way for nearly half a minute, before finally lifting his head in her direction, the fem's reflection casting off from the Decepticon's otherwise black visor.

"You might want to know that Dropshot finally decided to say something, but didn't admit to anything concerning what happened to him," she went on. "He _did_ say he has a friend; a shifter and fellow ex-Decepticon by the name of Sundowner that knows what predicament he's in, and gave us info needed to contact him. I'm heading down to Cybertron in an hour to meet up with him, and you're coming with me. Understand?"

Instead of nodding, the slender bot dropped his visored head against the gurney and went limp again. Arcee exhaled a loud breath.

"Soundwave... I know what you're feeling right now. But tell me, would you rather give up and waste away over something that happened in the past, or find something else that matters with the future? You have the rest of your life to contend with, and that started the day Megatron let you and every other mech under his command go."

Soundwave barely tilted his head to her, the answer more than clear that he wasn't going to talk. She gave him a glare and looked away, before looking back.

"Well either way, you're coming with me," she said again. "Get ready to head out in an hour."

With that, Arcee turned about and abruptly left the room, headed for the _Cliffside_ 's control area. Unbeknownst to her, Soundwave lifted his head and watched her leave. There was something about that fem that gave him a strange feeling he couldn't describe. He had done an admittedly more-than-unpleasant deed to her two nights ago, yet by the fact he wasn't already grabbed and escorted to a high-security prison by now, she insisted on letting him stay.

But when his curiosity over what this queer, indescribable feeling was had passed, he went right back to getting lost in his thoughts.

* * *

Though the sound of voices was everywhere, there was a hush amongst the surrounding crowd as Arcee and Soundwave both walked through one of Iacon's lower-east quadrants. Not bugged or rushed as much with his current predicament the last time he was out, Soundwave took the time to notice a pleasant blue sky showed overhead, and realized everything seemed so... _peaceful_. To be around civilians again was an alien feeling to him, but he shook it off quickly.

"Dropshot said we'd meet Sundowner at a street corner near here," Arcee spoke in a whisper to the Decepticon. He didn't respond.

Huffing at his persistent, though not unexpected silence, Arcee continued forward with her charge, their footsteps clanking on the metal ground until they both stopped briefly as she spotted a mech possessing an appearance matching the description she was looking for. The character standing by the street corner, who appeared to be waiting for someone, had a dark gray, spiky, thin, shadowy shape to him, and multiple legs trailed down by his side, reminiscent of that of an Insecticon. Both Soundwave and Arcee could see a paranoid gleam shimmer in either of his red, slit-like eyes, and his body seemed to twitch constantly.

"Excuse me, are you Sundowner?" Arcee asked, as they both came up to the jittery individual. Having not noticed them, he turned to the two.

"Me? Ah, yes, I am. And you must b-... S-S-S-S..." he tried to say, before his eyes peered over the two-wheeler's shoulder, and he entered a stutter. Looking as well, she noticed he was gazing at Soundwave fearfully.

"Don't mind Soundwave," she said in a collected voice, looking back at him.

"Wh-what? Don't mind S-S-Soundwave?" Sundowner asked, his form starting to contort into a smaller, insect-like shape as he spoke. "Don't mind Soundwave? _Don't mind Soundwave?!_ That's _Soundwave!_ The Decepticon's chief communications officer and confidante to _Megatron himself!_ What in everything good in this newly-restored world is _he_ doing with _you?_ An _Autobot?_ "

"Call it community service," she quipped, before her face became serious once more upon noticing that the bot's squawking had attracted the unwanted attention of about a dozen random passerbys. "Just... keep it down and listen. I came here because your friend, Dropshot, told me you knew some things about the ones that tried to kill him, apparently."

"I... I... yes, of... of course..." Sundowner replied, calming down and returning to his normal size. His multiple legs skittered to the side a little bit, in what looked like an effort to put some more distance in between himself and Soundwave, who tilted his head to the side upon seeing this. "Wh-what would you like to know?"

"Dropshot spoke of one with a name resembling something similar to "Dead-guy,"" she started. "Do you know who that is?"

"Well, not his name, no, but I know of one that serves under his command," he spoke.

"You do?"

"Y-yes, I know one of the bots that works for him," the shifter replied, his slit-sized optics looking around suspiciously, as if he felt someone he didn't want to be watching him was listening in. "He's a Decepticon that once worked as an armed peacekeeper before the war started, like y-you. He did some bad things, he did some secret things, and his main job was to route out traitors in the ranks and terminate them in any way he saw fit. He still does it today, even after the war has ended! That's the thing! That's how he got into the service of the other mech, and that's why he's trying to hunt Dropshot and I down. Because we quit being 'Cons."

"What's his name?" Arcee asked, a hint of urgency in her tone after hearing that last bit. Sundowner looked around again, twitching slightly before turning back, ready to answer.

"He... he goes by the name of Bar-"

With the sound of a blaster shot going through the air, followed closely by a mini-explosion, the shifter's head was suddenly blown in half, scattering energon and metal within a small radius. Everything seemed to go in slow motion for Arcee as she helplessly watched Sundowner, a look of blankness on what was left of his face, collapse onto the ground. His body's inevitable crash. The first scream from the crowd. The stray energon that collided against the side of her face. And then time caught up again.

"No!" she finally shouted, falling to her knees in a vain reaction to save the bot she already knew was dead, as her mind came to grips with Sundowner's demise. Quickly getting over his death, she looked to Soundwave, who stood next to her, looking off in the distance.

"Soundwave, where in Primus did that shot come from?!" she asked. He simply pointed to where he was looking at, which was the top of a nearby building. As Arcee looked to it, she just managed to see a medium-sized figure disappear behind the rooftop.

"Soundwave, that mech... Quickly! Transform and go after him!" she shouted her order. "I'll catch up with you, but go! Get him! Before he escapes!"

With a nod, Soundwave jumped into the air; the sound of a T-cog going out as he shifted into the form of a human-styled MQ-9 Reaper drone, and jetted off after whoever had fired the shot. Arcee, after looking back at Sundowner's remains and placing a servo on his body, stood back up and shifted into her own vehicle form, speedily chasing after Soundwave and the assassin as fast as she could go, sending out a loud whir through the crisp, panic-filled air.


	5. Chapter 5: Know Thy Enemy

Soundwave flew far above the ground as the vehicle below him, a four-wheeled car of a black-and-purple coloration, drove recklessly through the streets and crowd trying to outpace him. Several minutes into the chase, just as the mysterious character took a left, the small shape of Arcee's motorcycle form suddenly jumped from the corner of the road, and joined in on the hunt.

As Soundwave soared ahead, Arcee gained on the Cybertronian, putting her all into catching up with the enigmatic murderer. They had entered a stretch that contained multiple workers handling energon cells for storage once she was close enough to see the treads on his tires, and moments before the two-wheeler was upon him, a pair of small cannons emerged from his front. Sending out a red blast of energy, the shot that exited from the cannon's barrels instantly hit a stray fuel cell just ahead, sending out a chaotic mixture of thunderous explosions, alarmed shouts, and blue smoke through the street.

Stray bits of debris of varying sizes rained down from the sky, forcing Arcee to swerve and slow in order to avoid being crushed. The vehicle only pointed his cannons up and destroyed any chunks of metal headed his way, blasting more energon cells that caught his eye at the same time, garnering the same, destructive effect in the process. When he was far enough ahead, he shot at the cells lining a pillar, collapsing the structure in a way that caused it to fall with a mighty crash and block the rest of the road only after he had zoomed by. Stuck at the roadblock, Arcee was forced to stop, but she watched as Soundwave continued without her, his drone-like form flying past with a blazing speed.

As Soundwave neared his prey, Laserbeak; still attached to his master, started to shoot small, but powerful red beams at the car. Upon seeing Soundwave from his rear-view mirrors, the vehicle once more began to drive in a haphazard pattern, avoiding any blaster fire coming his way and maneuvering through the city with sharp skill to match a madman. Despite his random movement, Soundwave's targeting array managed to keep him in his sight the entire time, and slowly gained, avoiding passing buildings and bridges with ease.

Seeing it as the only way to pull out of Soundwave's range, the vehicle took a sharp turn at a corner, and drove into a flat, narrow tunnel that poked out from the ground; too small and close to the surface of the planet for his pursuer to fit through. Just before it could disappear, Soundwave's vision zoomed in as far as it could go, and he snapped several pictures of the car's back side.

Reaching the hole his target vanished behind, Soundwave stopped and transformed into his true form, unable to follow the car into the black tunnel. He couldn't fly to some other side and wait, either. This was one of many tunnels leading into the area that lied below Cybertron's crust, connecting to hundreds of other tunnels like a maze, each leading to all over the planet, and most likely housing thousands of bots. All he could do was stand there for a short time before the whir of a motor caught his audio receptors, and turned to face the approaching Arcee, shifting from her vehicle mode as well.

"Where did he go? Did you see where he went?" she asked, breathlessly. The Decepticon pointed to the tunnel with a finger, prompting Arcee to groan in anger.

"Scrap. It's a labyrinth down there," she muttered, looking into the dark underpass herself. "Tell me you have _some_ good news."

Nodding, Soundwave allowed one of the pictures he took to appear on his visor, showing the back end of the vehicle. Putting a servo to her chrome-tinted chin, Arcee looked at it for a few moments before speaking again.

"Well... it's a start," she sighed, her glare still lingering. "And lucky for both of us, a moment like this is one of the reasons I wanted you to work with me in the first place."

Soundwave tilted his head in confusion at her words.

* * *

After getting the complicated business over with; that being taking care of what was left of Sundowner and helping to resolve the incident with the other authorities, the two spent the last half of the day monitoring on the _Cliffside_ 's computers together, looking for the bot who took the shifter out.

Soundwave, his previous position in the Decepticon hierarchy having demanded him to be exceptional in using these devices this way, had found much solace in performing this familiar task. And so both he and Arcee searched for any leads that they could find that matched the photo of the assassin, yet finding no luck as the day drew to an end.

Throughout the next day, the same thing happened, but still nothing was discovered. Arcee was sure with herself that whoever was in that picture was a former Decepticon, and since they couldn't match his alternate form's appearance to anyone in the database, she knew he must have reformatted his form sometime in the past. But soon, this day also came to an end, and the time had become late.

Arcee let out a yawn and stretched her left arm out above her head, finally stepping away from the computer. "Well, I'm beat," she spoke, before checking the time. "Time to call it another day. Soundwave?"

As she said his name, the Decepticon in question stopped his work, and instantly headed for the gurney without prompting. Once he was in place, Arcee put in the code for his shackles, but made sure that she placed her body in a way that kept him from seeing what she put down. With that over with, she headed to the doorway that lead to where her quarters were, before spinning around and looking at her charge again.

"Today was... quite the busy day, wasn't it?" the fem asked, letting out a small chuckle. Her expression mollified as Soundwave didn't respond; a factor she was by now more than used to.

"Well... goodnight, Soundwave," she bid him, before departing from the room. After letting an hour pass, Soundwave, feigning sleep, began to stir.

After some effort, reminiscent of how he escaped previously, a tentacle managed to squeeze out of the shackles, and made its way to the terminal, this time implanting itself into it. After a few dozen minutes, he was able to hack through the device, and once more turned the shackles off, getting to his feet afterword.

His reason for escaping this time was directly about what Arcee had said previously. She had stated that she had known what he felt like to be in his current position, and he wanted proof of that, since he had relatively no other objective worth getting up over. Making his way back to the computer, he turned it on and accessed its files. The cortical psychic patch stored all of the data he collected from Arcee's mind in the computer's memory, and soon the Decepticon activated it.

Nothing in the beginning of her life held anything of the value he searched for, so he went forward a fair ways, stopping once he reached one that Arcee's thoughts had first expressed sever physical and emotional trauma. The footage before him took place in the thick of the war, and showed that she was trapped. She was also being tortured, and the bot performing the heinous deed was none other than Airachnid.

Arcee held out through the torture without giving an ounce of her determination up. Defiantly, she gave the same negative answer to her captor over and over again, frustrating the sadistic bot. Then, her defiance wavered like a curtain as they brought in another Autobot prisoner. An Autobot that Soundwave soon found out was named Tailgate, and was Arcee's partner throughout the start of the conflict.

Soundwave saw it was not fear that was jolting through Arcee's mind now as the scene played out, but abject, unbridled _terror_. And then he watched through the fem's eyes as she witnessed her partner get his throat slashed in front of her, all that terror mixing itself with hopeless despair after the deed had been done.

Being raised in the pits of Kaon, bloodshed of this caliber was not a shock to Soundwave, but watching it happen through someone else that didn't have his mindset did seem somewhat... _perturbing_. Deciding to skip forward a month after this incident, he saw the outcome it had on the now-free Arcee. Her pain and despair had evolved into rage and lust for vengeance. It appeared to stay that way for many millennia afterword, though it regressed heavily as every single one of those years went by.

As he found the next scene of importance after skipping ahead, he could see that a once-again captured Arcee was meeting a familiar-looking bot with a red paint job. It took him a second, but searching through his memory banks, he realized that this new Autobot was Cliffjumper.

Ah yes, Cliffjumper. He remembered that Autobot well. The first one the Decepticons encountered on earth. Captured by vehicons and destroying a quarry filled with energon in the process. Executed in his weakened state by Starscream, and then, finally, resurrected by Megatron upon being infused with dark energon as the first of his mindless terrorcons.

He watched the screen as the two escaped from Starscream and Shockwave's clutches. He watched as they formally became partners upon arriving at earth from the space bridge they took. He watched as the two grew closer and closer over the following years, and the scars that were left behind with Tailgate's demise ever so slowly covered themselves at last, giving the Decepticon an unadmittedly small feeling of elation toward the two.

Then he watched as those scars reopened back into grievous, bleeding wounds the day Arcee discovered Cliffjumper's crumpled, detached horn in the dirt upon the latter's abduction and fatal deactivation. Then he watched those wounds fester upon seeing her place her more-than-friend's horn upon a mound of rocks; a small memorial dedicated to him. He could _only_ watch as Arcee discovered what kind of abomination Megatron had turned him into after defiling his corpse with his corrupting element.

That strange feeling from watching Tailgate's spark get extinguished returned in double the full force, and Soundwave couldn't help but place a servo to his visor, a small pang of a confusing emotion that felt alien to him prompting the action.

He took his fingers off of his covered face though, as something else came up. A human, whom Arcee designated as "Jack Darby," and one who Soundwave remembered would later helped in the effort to trap him in the Shadowzone. He observed as the following seasons went by, and the two's relationship ended up growing from one-sided disfavor, to mutual respect, then to complete friendship. By the time the Autobots had defeated the Decepticons over the earth and left it to attend to the reborn Cybertron, a large piece of the void left behind by her previous two partner's passings had been filled by the human. Not every piece, but a piece nonetheless.

And then it came to the present. With his desire to know more about Arcee's past quenched as far as he knew, Soundwave exited Arcee's memories, and shut off the computer's screen. The second it faded to black, alarm rose within the Decepticon when he saw Arcee's shape reflecting off of the glass's surface, showing her standing in the room's doorway.

He turned about when he let a few seconds of watching her motionless reflection pass, and saw she was leaning on the doorway's wall, her arms folded over her chest, and a scowl adorning her glowing, blue eyes.

"You looked into my memories again," she finally spoke in a very low tone, cutting through the silence like a knife. "And escaped. Again."

Soundwave slowly took his hand off of the monitor's keyboard, and let it drop by his side as she got up from her position and walked her smaller, blue form up to his own. "What exactly were you trying to do? Know me better by looking into my past? See what made me into who I am today?"

Arcee felt a small hint of shock go through her as she watched him nod once in reply.

"Y-you don't learn what kind of bot they are just by observing them, Soundwave. You know, you could just _ask_ who I am. Or at the very least give a hint about a question like that," she scolded, her stern visage slowly turning neutral. "For a brief summary, I started out life as a cadet that wanted to keep the peace until the war started. I went through war as a scout for the faction whose ideals I agreed with, and felt all the happiness and pain that came with it. Then when it ended, I did my best to move on. End of story."

Soundwave just stood silently as Arcee tried to think of something else to say that might get to him.

"As I said before, I know your background as a gladiator in the pits of Kaon," she started again. "And from what I've heard, that sounds like it was a hard life; having to fight and kill to survive. I can understand how you would agree with Megatron's plans for what he thought was the best future for Cybertron and the Decepticons. I truly do."

The Decepticon lowered his head as he remembered his own beginnings. She went on as he raised it again.

"You're not like other Cybertronians, are you Soundwave? You look like you never take the time to do anything for yourself, only your cause. Decepticons I've interrogated in the past told me you always focused on your objective, and left no room for distractions."

Hearing her words, Soundwave lifted his shoulders in a shrug of agreement. Arcee turned her head away and began to think. The moment she had a thought she felt good on, which was less than a few seconds into thinking, her expression lightened up and she smiled.

"I've got an idea..." she said in a devious tone, snapping her fingers when she looked back to him. "That's what you need to start doing! Thinking for yourself! Tomorrow night, if we have the time, I'll take you out to a restaurant, just you and I."

Soundwave seemed to beam at her from behind his visor. Before doing anything else, he started to quickly shake his head in complete dissent to her plan; the entire thing catching him utterly off-guard.

"Oh, come on..." she chuckled in a friendly voice. "I'm willing to bet my rivets you never ate at one before. We'll just go as coworkers!"

Soundwave shook his head again, still in disagreement. He continued to perform this action as he walked to his gurney, the two-wheeler continuing on as he brushed past her.

"It will be your first night as your own bot! You'll _love_ it, Soundwave! You have no idea what wonders some bots can do to energon with the right ingredients," she said, clenching her servos for emphasis as he hooked himself up to his bed-like construct, and inputted the information to close its restraints with his tentacle before retracting it.

"Like it or not, I'm taking you tomorrow," she spoke in a positively stubborn tone, Soundwave noting the arrogant smile planted on her lips as she started to leave the room. "So if I were you, I'd prepare to get my appetite on..."


	6. Chapter 6: Actions are Louder than Words

Entering the diner, the _Lug Wrench_ as Soundwave found out it was called, the Decepticon noticed it looked like a curious place, but not unexpected from all the buildings of Iacon. The silver walls it bore on the inside, painted blue a short time ago by the looks of it, practically reeked of a welcoming vibe. Dozens of Cybertronians were here as well, with a combination of families, friends, or alone bots sitting in the multiple stalls that lined the floor and its halls.

"I know some of the bots here," Arcee spoke, regaining the Decepticon's attention. No sooner had she talked, they were both approached by a gray-colored mini-con with a cylinder-shaped head, and wearing an energon-stained apron over his body. Arcee greeted him accordingly.

"Hello, Quiche."

"Cee! nice to see you again," he greeted back, staring at Arcee with his green eyes before looking to Soundwave.

"Who's your friend? Wait... is he... a _Decepticon?_ " he asked, upon seeing the symbol on Soundwave's right shoulder.

"Well, yes," Arcee replied. Quiche put a greasy, energon-stained hand on his aproned hip, and gave an odd look to the scout.

"The last time you came in here with a Decepticon, half of the restaurant got trashed," he spoke. Soundwave looked down at Arcee, and she looked back with an amused expression, clearly remembering a past event.

"Long story," she chuckled. "He was a convicted felon I was trying to confront. Before I knew it, he was throwing everything he could find at me, and ran out the door. I managed to chase him down before he could get far."

"...And left this place in as much of a mess as to rival a battlefield," Quiche finished, as Arcee refocused her attention back to him.

"Don't worry, he's just a friend," she said again, placing a servo on Soundwave's arm, prompting the Decepticon to turn to it in a somewhat annoyed way. "A friend that needs to get out and experience life's joys a little more."

"Well, as long as you're not here for any destructive reasons, the _Lug Wrench_ , is the perfect place to experience such a joy. Welcome to this fine establishment, mister...?"

" _Soundwave,_ " Soundwave spoke, using Megatron's voice from a long-past conversation. Quiche's optics dilated in unexpected surprise upon hearing the familiar name.

"S-Soundwave, huh?" he stuttered, before regaining his composure. "Well, _ahem_ , uh... follow me to your table."

Quiche led them to a booth, and then when they sat down, he took a data pad out from his back.

"Do either of you know what you want?" he asked, ready to take note.

"I'll just have the spiced soup with some flakes over the top, as per the usual" she replied. Quiche then turned to Soundwave.

"And you?"

Instead of talking, Soundwave just lifted his head and looked to Quiche with a faceless glare. He remained doing so, all in still silence, even after the waiter started to get a nervous look on his face.

"Your friend is beginning to make me feel uncomfortable..." he whispered to the Autobot. Arcee let out a somewhat entertained sigh.

"Just let him look through the menu for a few minutes," she smiled. With a quick bow of the head, Quiche hurriedly left the table, and Soundwave resumed looking back to Arcee.

"Here," she said again, sliding a menu to him. "Just order anything you like."

Soundwave slowly opened the slab of plastic and tilted his head downward, looking at what was in it with a confused mind. He had no idea in the first place that there were "recipes" for energon, and how they made the pictures of the multiple choices look was just... mind-boggling, to say in the least.

"The energon noodles are back as part of a special," Arcee mentioned, pointing to where she read. "I've heard they're delicious."

As she said that, Soundwave, though slightly hesitant, pointed a finger at the noodles, deciding to trust her judgement.

"Good choice," she grinned. "I'll tell him for you when he gets back."

As they waited, Soundwave put the menu back and scanned what multiple events went on around the room to ease his boredom, letting his visor's long-range hearing device wander as well, as he looked.

A couple a few stalls in front of them were talking cheerfully about politics. A motherly figure on the other side of the floor was attempting to teach a newborn sparkling how to speak as she ate her own meal, apparently enjoying the moment. Two burly characters that walked out the door laughed as one said a joke detailing something about their job, and a new figure; a mech with a black-and-purple paint job, dark purple optics, and a seemingly permanent grimace for a face entered the diner.

His sensors practically screamed that this figure was one of importance, his visor zoomed in, and he focused almost completely on this new character as he got a table just down the aisle, and took a seat. He was further intrigued as he saw the unusual Cybertronian put a razor-like claw to the side of his head where a com most likely lied, and decided to listen in, quickly focusing his hearing device in the bot's area.

" _Yeah, I see her_ ," the figure spoke into a com from across the room, as he shifted a quick glance in their direction. " _You wouldn't know the irony, but I even met her two days ago, believe it or not. Wait, Vendetta said she wanted_ that? _Alright, Dead End. Consider it done._ "

Taking his finger off his head, the mech put one of his arms on the table and let it transform into a cannon-like blaster, and placed it on the table. He appeared to be inspecting the device, and pulled a large, bullet-esque slug from his side when he was done. Without a word, he opened a hidden compartment on the weapon, and loaded the shot into it before closing it again and letting the limb morph back.

Searching his memory, Soundwave let the image of one of the pictures he took appear on his visor's screen, showing that enigmatic car he and Arcee had attempted to catch. Unbeknownst to him as he estimated the chance of that individual being the assassin they were after, Arcee watched Soundwave with curious eyes as she saw his screen sort through and examine the picture. "Something on your mind?" she asked. The moment she spoke, the picture disappeared, and Soundwave's visor went black again.

He quickly shook his head, telling her that he was fine. She gave a doubting look. Before anything else could be said, Soundwave abruptly stood up.

"Um... where are you going?" she then inquired, as he started to walk past her and down the aisle.

" _Sightseeing_ ," he spoke over his shoulder, using Arcee's voice from a few nights previously. Arcee observed Soundwave as he walked with his typical, slow pace to this new bot's booth. His estimates told him that there was an eighty-nine percent chance that this mech was the one they were looking for, and that was a percentage he was willing to trust. As he got to the table, Soundwave stopped and just looked down at the bot, provoking him into talking.

"Can I... help you?" he asked with curled brows. Soundwave responded by shooting a single servo out and grabbing the bot by his collar with a strong grip, and picked him up soon after.

"Whoa! Hey! Hey!" he shouted as he was lifted from his seat, into the air. Before Soundwave could do anything further, Arcee had jumped from her seat, and ran up to him.

"Soundwave, what are you doing?" she asked in an angered tone when she reached her charge

"Well, he's lifting me in the air, if that's anything to go by," the bot still currently in Soundwave's clutches deadpanned. Arcee shot a scolding look at Soundwave, convincing the bot to slowly put him down and retract his servo.

"I'm sorry about him, but who exactly are you?" Arcee then decided to inquire

"The name's Barricade. I joined the peacekeeping force around here two weeks ago," he spoke, brushing himself off as he sat again. "And you must be the famous Arcee I've heard so much about. It's a _pleasure_ to meet someone who worked with Optimus Prime himself."

Before Arcee could respond, he turned back to Soundwave.

"Your friend seems rather... touchy."

"Yes, well... I'm going to have a word with him," she said, grabbing Soundwave by the arm, and dragging him just a few feet away. As Soundwave pulled his arm away, he stepped back from her by a pace and placed the palm of his servo on his visor in a frustrated manner. Taking it off, he saw Arcee give him another angered glare from where she still stood.

"Soundwave, I said you could think for yourself now, but _that's_ not one of the things you can do," she started. "Why, in the name of the Allspark, did you just lift a stranger up?"

As she spoke to Soundwave, the Decepticon, while keeping his head aimed in her direction, had his sight and attention aimed at Barricade. He watched as the bot transformed his servo back into its blaster form, and inspected the cannon-like weapon as he was doing before. With zero emotion radiating from his otherwise bland, grimacing expression, the so-called "fellow peacekeeper" suddenly pointed the weapon toward both of them in what looked like a carefree action, until Soundwave saw its barrel lighting up with a red glow once it was aiming at the back of Arcee's head, indicating hostile intentions.

The second a thunderous shot rang out, Soundwave acted on pure instinct and burst forward to push Arcee out of the way, accidentally entering the shot's trajectory in the process. As he sent Arcee to the ground, the bullet-shaped beam of energy from the blaster practically exploded in Soundwave's face, throwing the slender Cybertronian smashing through an empty booth a dozen meters away from where he stood with pure, concussive force, destroying the metal table completely.

"Idiot, getting in the way of my last boltshot round..." Barricade muttered under his breath, getting up. Without another word he began to dash for the exit as Arcee and the surprised onlookers started to recuperate. Jumping to her legs, she activated her blaster and would have given chase to the would-be assassin, but stopped when she was just a few feet ahead and looked back to the bot that just saved her spark.

"Soundwave!" she shouted, running to his side and kneeling beside him, her hand transforming again. As she approached, the Decepticon tried to sit up from the debris that now surrounded him, in a shaky manner, revealing his partially-damaged head. The upper right side of his visor took the brunt of the blaster shot and had been completely shattered to that point, revealing a widened optic of a bright purple color, similar to the glowing lines that outlined his body, staring from what little was revealed of a chrome-tinted face. His left arm was also impaled by a leg from what was left of the table he landed on.

"Easy there, easy..." Arcee spoke in a gentle voice as she placed a servo behind the ailing Decepticon's head, looking behind her and seeing that Barricade was long gone. She looked back at Soundwave with a very worried expression.

" _Barrica-Barricade-ade-ade-ade-ade..._ " Soundwave tried to say in the mech's own voice, the damaged visor malfunctioning and distorting its tone heavily. Attempting to ignore the two-wheeler's help, Soundwave tried to lift himself up. Moments into his effort, his optic suddenly rolled into the back of his head and closed as his body went still, falling into Arcee's open servos. As she slowly and carefully placed his larger form down, she put a finger to her com and spoke into it in a controlled, but fear-filled voice.

"Ultra Magnus, I've got a situation..."


	7. Chapter 7: The Visor

Arcee sat on the lower side of the large metal gurney Soundwave's still-inactive body lied upon. They were both at a local hospital, in a room made empty just to specially house the lethal Decepticon.

His condition was stable, and the medics managed to repair most of his body; save for his visor, which remained cracked, and revealing only his closed eye. They had decided against removing it; convinced by Arcee not delve that far. However, they did manage to make sure the glass was well off enough not to let any shards get in his optic.

With a sigh, Arcee shifted another glance back at the Decepticon, eyeing especially the ever-so-enigmatic part of his visor that was shattered. She had been perched on the spot for nearly an hour, and had been reassured he was fine twice now. Finally she stood up from the gurney, but before leaving, the two-wheeler paced to Soundwave's upper half, careful not to disturb Laserbeak, who still lied on his chest.

"You did something today that I'll never forget, Soundwave," Arcee decided to say first to the unconscious bot, her tone soft as she placed a servo on his arm in an intimate way. He still lied, unmoving and not at all awake. She looked away and lowered her head, but keeping her servo on his arm.

"You saved my life," she spoke again "Heh... I'm still kind of in disbelief that you did it in the first place, considering... well, you know. If you were awake right now... I don't know how I could ever properly thank a bot like you. But... for now..."

She slowly leaned in with the slowest possible pace, and kissed him on his forehead, just above his visor, closing her optics as she did so. When her lips broke off contact, she stared at the Decepticon one last time, and with that she left him, headed for the door.

Opening it, several Autobots stepped in, as she expected. "We'll make sure he doesn't go anywhere," the leader of them spoke. "Ultra Magnus permitted you to return and visit him whenever you see fit."

"Just... call me when he wakes up," she said, before exiting from where they entered. The second the door shifted close behind her, Soundwave's eye suddenly opened; its white, mechanical iris dilating rapidly among the purple glow the rest of it gave off.

* * *

"Soundwave did something very admirable in taking that shot for you," Ultra Magnus spoke in his firm, aged voice as Arcee and himself rode down in the elevator together.

"He really did save my chassis today," she replied to the far larger bot in a quiet tone, her arms folded and head turned to the elevator's wall. "The doctors told me that had that "boltshot" hit me, my head would have been in too many pieces to identify. Soundwave's visor, along with the metal he's made with, were both made of durable alloys that were resistant to the boltshot's intended effect, which is why he managed to survive. Or, so they say..."

"This "Barricade" character has yet to show up anywhere else in Iacon as far as we've seen, and the only records we have of him are a name; the rest has been deleted, on purpose," Magnus went on, as the elevator door opened, and the pair stepped out.

"Figures," she frowned, as the door closed behind them both. "Soundwave saw something in him that I didn't. Instead of explaining it to me, he tried to go after him by himself. I didn't know what was going on, and when I tried to talk to him about it... ugh."

"You sound concerned," he stated, turning down to her. "Concerned in a way that sounds a bit different than just a peacekeeper and her liability."

"It's nothing," the fem quickly replied. Magnus willingly left it at that, but then another question came to his mind.

"How have you two been doing together in terms of getting along? Ratchet gave me a call from earth a short time ago with hints suggesting something worrisome."

"It's been interesting," she responded. "Very... _interesting_. The good kind, though."

As Arcee finished her sentence, a noise started on Ultra Magnus's com. As he answered it, Arcee pressed her com as well, listening in.

" _Ultra Magnus! We have a problem!_ " the bot on the other end shouted into the com, his voice in a panic. " _Soundwave's awake, and he's broken out! He just- aagh!_ "

The com went dark as the bot screamed. Magnus pressed the com button again, hoping to reconnect.

"Soldier? Soldier, come in!" he spoke. "Arcee, do you think you can get up there fast e- Arcee?"

Turning his head over, he saw Arcee was no longer standing by his side. "Arcee?" he asked aloud again, looking around. It didn't take him a second to realize where she had absconded to.

Arcee had avoided the elevator's slowness altogether, and instead dashed up the stairs as fast as she could run, the wing-like protrusions on her back shook back and forth as she ran.

Finally reaching the room after finishing the stairs and going through a hallway, she activated the door and burst in. The first thing she saw was the empty gurney and a moaning body slung over it, followed by the sight of the multiple, defeated guards that littered the ground, and finally, standing by a window, was the shape of Soundwave. His purple eye, wide and erratically twitching, stared at her in silence.

"Soundwave, you need to calm down..." Arcee tried to reason, slowly making her way toward him. "You're not in any danger. This place is just a hospital. You were injured, and we were trying to repair you."

" _Barricade-cade-cade-cade-ca-_ " he tried to recite in the voice Barricade had used prior to attacking, only for it to malfunction as it did before and fizz out. He slowly lifted his servo to the broken visor, as if in shock that it was in such a state, before it malfunctioned further. " _Barricade-cade-cade. The-the name's Barri-Barri-Barricade-cade-cade-cade._ "

Turning, Soundwave suddenly flung himself out of the window, breaking through the glass. Yelling his name again, Arcee ran up to where he was just standing, and looked out at Soundwave as he fell.

He managed to transform in midair despite his addled state, and took off into the night sky with a boost from his engine. Arcee could only watch with worried eyes and a helpless expression as he soon disappeared behind a faraway building.

* * *

Arcee sped through the streets in her motorcycle form, desperate to find Soundwave as soon as possible, even if it was unlikely she would locate him in such a manner. It was the only thing she could do to look for him at the moment, and it was a chance she took. Ultra Magnus put Iacon on high alert, and whatever bots were available, their numbers still small for a police-slash-military force due to how many trained mechs there were after the war, were searching as well.

 _Damn it, Soundwave! Where in Primus' name are you?_ she continued to ask herself in her head. Nearly an hour went on before she started to give up, but mere moments before she could turn around, a repeating, high-pitched sound went overhead.

She looked up in reaction and saw the shape she instantly recognized, to her great relief, as Laserbeak. The mini-con was steadily approaching her, looking at the blue two-wheeler from its thin, glaring, purple visor; the only expression it could ever show.

"Laserbeak?" she said aloud. Continuing its shrill noise, the drone-like mini-con suddenly went ahead of her, turned, and began to fly down the street at a fast pace. Without a second thought, Arcee followed. They went down the road a fair ways, making several turns in the process, before Laserbeak made a final turn at an alleyway, and entered it. Arcee paused as she saw the mini-con disappear, and transformed when she was in front of the alleyway herself.

With caution in her footsteps, Arcee slowly walked into the dark passage, her clanking footsteps echoing from the closed-in walls.

"Soundwave, are you in here?" she asked, after making it several feet.

"I am here," a deep, guttural voice replied from the darkness, surprising her. As she wandered in further, a familiar, tall shape left the shadows, standing before her.

"You're talking," she said in a still-surprised voice.

"I've been thinking as well," Soundwave spoke back, his eye looking away.

"About... what?"

"About whom you told me to think about. Myself," he started. "For most of my existence I followed Megatron, looking to him as a messiah to the oppressed and downtrodden of Cybertron. I practically became a self-made zealot in his service, abandoning whatever I previously thought was precious. Accepting the face and identity my task and the Decepticons desired and gave me, after I took a vow of silence to my show my devotion, I lost my voice as well. Only after Megatron himself denounced the Decepticons did I realize what happened to me while I served him faithfully. What I was missing. What I had... forced myself to forget..."

He placed a servo onto his visor, curling his long fingers around it. With a popping noise, he pried the broken, black screen off, along with the metal that outlined and held it. After he removed it fully, Arcee couldn't help but stare as she saw his face.

Soundwave's face looked... _normal_. It was chrome-tinted, like Arcee's own, had a small mouth and appeared somewhat narrow, but was otherwise utterly normal. Arcee had expected him to be hiding something under his mask, like a scar at the very least, but that wasn't the case. The only markings he seemed to bear were a pair of lines under each eye that trailed over his cheeks, not unlike what many other Cybertronians had, and his purple eyes.

"...I realized that I had forgotten my _true_ face. My _own_ identity. My _own_ voice. And now that I have them back, I see that in this type of world... in this type of age... _I am nothing._ "

Turning his palm to the side, he let the visor fall from his grasp to the ground; its glass part shattering upon impact. He proceeded to lower his head and inhale deeply; his first breath after taking it off.

"Without Megatron... without that cause I spent everything I could have had in an attempt to make it a reality... I have _nothing_."

"That's not true," Arcee interrupted, stepping up to him with an arguing glare. Soundwave lifted his head and looked into her optics.

"How do you know?" he inquired to the smaller bot. Arcee started to reply by grabbing his servo, startling him.

"Because you have _me_ ," she spoke, closing her other hand over his own. "Because you're more than just my charge. You're my _partner_. And as long as you're my partner, you're not alone; I can guarantee you of that. And frag it if you think otherwise."

"Partner..." Soundwave repeated, but this time without using his device of imitation. "Are you saying you hold me in the same regard as your previous two Cybertronian companions? You lost them to those I worked beside, and their deactivations wounded you grievously."

"Tailgate and Cliffjumper..." Arcee spoke in a faint whisper, looking away briefly as she thought of them. "Yes, I lost them both, but I cherished the time I spent with them. I cherish it, and remember them as they were when they were alive."

"You truly see one like I - one that has attempted to end your life in the past - as one of them?" he inquired, perplexed.

Arcee loosed a smirk. "What you did in the past, happened in the past. What really matters is what you choose to do now as a bot with willing control of your own gears."

She let go of his hand and shrugged, remembering another, fairly important detail that strengthened her argument. "And after all, you _did_ save my spark earlier today, and almost lost yours in the process. That seemed like a noble move worthy of gaining my trust."

"I did so because I've seen that your life means more than mine. It seemed like a fitting end for me to ensure one like you could go on."

"Just because the Decepticons are officially no more doesn't mean your worth is any less than mine," Arcee said, her serious tone returning. "Like I said once before, it just means you need to find another way to continue with your life. To improve it in a way you deem positive. I don't know how you overrode your mind into thinking like _that_ , but you need to stop it before it consumes you and leaves you trapped in the past. Trust me, I've fallen to a place like that before."

After a minute of silence, she gestured for him to follow her. "Now, come on. Ultra Magnus has the entire city looking for you."

Looking down a last time, Soundwave finally began to abide. As they left the alley, Arcee spoke up once more in a friendly attempt to start a conversation with her partner.

"You know, hearing you speak to me for the first time, I actually thought you were going to talk in third-person, like how you did when we captured you back on earth."

"You must remember, I had just erased most of the data my mind held, and crashed my drives," he replied, looking to her. "If anything, it was a marvel I spoke coherently at all before I shut down."

"You're certainly resourceful for just a "communications officer," you know that?" she then complimented, elbowing him playfully on the shoulder.

"I have to be for what I did," he responded in a blunt tone. And so the two continued to talk with one another, moving forward as the broken visor behind them lied where it was, undisturbed.


	8. Chapter 8: Traps Abound

A week had passed since that day Soundwave removed his visor. The Autobots he had injured in his escape from the hospital had recovered, and Ultra Magnus ensured that all had become well following the incident. The two "partners" spent most of the week recuperating following that no-doubt strenuous change on Soundwave's part, and tried to get to know one another better, which Arcee found very enjoyable.

Another new event also happened as well. Instead of hooking Soundwave back up to the gurney at night, Arcee decided to take a chance and allowed him to recharge on a berth beside her own. So far, this new display of trust was holding up as well as she wanted.

Awaking at an early hour, Arcee began to stir once more. Curling her hand into a ball, she sat up and looked around, becoming fully alert after but a few seconds. As she stretched an arm over her head and let out a yawn, she saw that Soundwave's bunk on the other side of the room was empty. With a sigh, she realized he was active around the ship without her knowing.

Again.

"Soundwave..." she groaned to herself, jumping from her bed. Knowing where he was, the Autobot sauntered into the next room, and sure enough, there he was. Soundwave stood in front of the computer, the appearance of hundreds of constantly shifting video displays around on its wide screen as he typed upon its keyboard. His two tentacles were plugged into it to allow maximum speed and control with the device, and his purple eyes scanned what was in front of him with a searching immoderation.

"Hey, 'Wave," Arcee greeted with an affectionate nickname as she went up to him, getting his attention. "Mind telling me what you're observing?"

"After perceiving that these murders have only taken place in Iacon and Kaon, I have hacked into their respective security systems," he immediately replied, monotonously. "I am currently using all they have for camera and sound equipment to spy on the local populous for signs of Barricade, or any activity he may be attempting to perpetrate."

"You _hacked_ into the city's security systems?" Arcee exclaimed, beaming at him, placing her servos on her hips. He merely nodded in reply.

"Soundwave, do you know anything about other bot's privacy?"

"Yes, but privacy means nothing when there is an objective to complete," he responded. "And I have used my resources to accrue valuable information. Dropshot, as we both remember was released from the hospital, has received a death threat from someone he fears greatly, and who I presume to be Barricade. He has become too afraid to leave his apartment and has holed himself up in it, but managed to tell a friend who is now currently on his way to contact authorities for him."

"You found that?" she spoke. "When?"

"Six minutes ago," he said calmly. "I have already choreographed what I think is the best course of action. I was also about to awaken and tell you of my findings, Arcee."

"Well, it might not have been the most sanitary of methods, but..." she started, before giving a well-meaning grin. "...At least you may have just gotten us ahead of Barricade before he could claim another victim. Good job, Soundwave."

Looking to Arcee's positive expression after receiving the compliment, Soundwave's permanent frown looked as though it was starting to lift. Before it could become a full-on smile, the Cybertronian realized what action he was about to perform, and returned to his default, neutral mien.

"Thank you," he spoke, before getting ready to sign off from the computer.

* * *

The sound of metal being sharpened echoed through the subsurface passage as Barricade made his way through it. A river of energon beside him slowly made its long way through a great many large pipes and tubes, and those pipes and tubes lead elsewhere like a stream of glowing lights everywhere he looked. As the Decepticon went further into the bowels of Cybertron's underground system, the noise gradually became louder and louder, until a sight he was more than familiar with came into view.

It was a makeshift abode, not unlike what one would compare to a slightly less-messy rat's nest. There was a table here, a scrap pile there, an old, outdated computer and multiple networks connected to it somewhere in the back, but in the corner was a well-built, medium-sized mech of a strange appearance; his colors a sickly, venomous mixture of green, black, and red. While there was one also sheathed on his back, currently clutched in one of his hands was a sword with a bright, lime-green blade, and in the other was a simple slab of smoothly-torn metal, currently being used to sharpen the weapon. His head was small and appeared to lack a mouth, but to add on to its eeriness, he had a small pair of green-yellow eyes with a seemingly ethereal complexion to them.

"I did as you requested, Dead End," Barricade spoke to the bot upon seeing him.

The bot remained silent and kept his head down, as if not listening, though his comrade knew better. After taking a seat on a nearby, old chair and pulling his blaster out to examine it for any imperfections, he spoke once more.

"Come nightfall, I'll return to the surface and take care of him."

"No..." the other Cybertronian finally said, his cracked voice creeping from behind his mouthless face; its very sound resembling something wretched dripping out of a rotted casket in a long-forgotten crypt. "No, do not go tonight. Not tonight. I sense their eyes, ever watching, ever peeking... I sense they will guard him tonight."

"Who?" Barricade asked in a curiosity-piqued tone, turning from his gun to his ally.

"The ones I look for. The ones you tried to destroy," Dead End replied, running the slab of metal along the sword's edge again, sending out another, grating ring. "The ones I now realize I need for my agenda..."

"Wait... you mean those two at the diner from a week ago?" he inquired again, his attention now fully off his gun. "Wait, "tried?" That tall one's still alive?"

"Yessss..." Dead End hissed in a strangely happy way. "But he is not the one I seek. The female one... I feel she knows where my true prey lies in this universe. I am glad that you failed in your task to extinguish her spark."

"Well, killing her _was_ what that Vendetta contact said she wanted..."

"Do not consort with her for now," the being ordered, twisting his sword to the side to get another view of it. "She wants what I do not, and the other way around. Her loyalty to Megatron is in question to me, but our tasks align most where else, especially in our acrimony toward hunting down those worthless, traitorous weaklings that have abandoned the Decepticons. But with this fem... with this _Arcee_ she has such a zeal in wanting to destroy... leave her to _me_."

"What of her ally?" Barricade decided to question next. "I don't know who he is, but there was something familiar about him. It was as if I had seen him once before, a long time ago."

"He is Soundwave. Chief communications officer to our cause, and Lord Megatron's most loyal follower," Dead End stated, causing Barricade to widen his optics in surprise. "Official reports left it vague whether he had been killed or imprisoned in the final battle over earth. Now... now I see he has been enslaved to to the Autobots. Forced into demeaning, indentured servitude to that blue two-wheeler, who, unless I am mistaken, was one of the bots who worked alongside that Prime. And when I personally devour the life essence from her spark before, or after prying everything she knows from her otherwise worthless brain module, we shall free him from it."

"I issued the threat toward Dropshot, and the trap is set. Where do I come in next?" his fellow asked in an effort to change the subject dealing with his partner's disturbing dietary habits, readily cocking his blaster's barrel. Dead End slowly shook his head, his beady, pupil-less eyes shaking with it.

"As I said before, you must stay put tonight, my ally. Stay put, stay safe, stay here. They shan't expect to see my face, and my blade they soon will fear..."

A chill went down Barricade's sensors as he heard the bot near him sheath his sword and stand. "Are you sure about that?"

"I am sure," he spoke, setting off. "And when I return, I shall have whatever parts of her we require. So get that neural device running nice and well..."


	9. Chapter 9: Dead End

Arcee stood on the roof outside of Dropshot's apartment building, surveying the area far below in the same way she had been doing since that morning. Elsewhere, further away than she could see, Soundwave was soaring through the sky in his alternate mode and monitoring the ground below. Several hours had gone by since they first started this mission, and as this hour ended, Arcee pressed a finger to her com to check in.

"Have you noticed anything on your end, Soundwave?"

" _Still negative,_ " her partner replied. Arcee was about to say a usual goodbye to end the brief conversation, when another thought came to mind.

"You know, just the two of us performing reconnaissance together... it kind of reminds me of the time when it was just Cliff and I out on patrol in the Nevada countryside," she started again, remembering the fond moment of the past. "Just the two of us, talking to each other over the comlink as we searched for Decepticons, the afternoon sun overhead... it feels nostalgic."

" _Arcee, may I... ask you something?_ " Soundwave inquired in a tone Arcee sensed was much more tender than his usual flat, emotionless voice, after a brief period of silence.

"Shoot," she replied. On the other end, she could hear the Decepticon let out a quiet sigh.

" _I was wondering if... on second thought, nevermind,_ " he said in a hesitant manner that only served to attract the two-wheeler's interest.

Arcee chuckled silently on her end. "You sure about that? It sounds like it's important."

" _No, it's nothing of_ major _importance,_ " he responded. " _I'll... I shall contact you again if I see our target, or anything suspicious._ "

"Stay safe," Arcee managed to say once more, before the line went dead. She looked back out to the city; Cybertron's sun indeed shining an orange color from overhead, showing to all that it was the afternoon. Though she kept her guard up, Arcee couldn't help but let her mind wander off and think of Soundwave.

Soundwave was a completely different Cybertronian now that he didn't have his visor. He was far more open than he was before - talkative, even - but only to Arcee, and when no others were around. And every time he wasn't next to her as he spoke, such as over the comlink, he sounded like a bot trying desperately to hide a secret. Arcee also had something she had refrained from revealing. She meant it when she said he was her partner, that was true, but she also felt something... _more_ in the last few days of being with him since he had saved her life. The last time she had a feeling remotely close to this warmth in her spark was with Cliffjumper.

There seemed to be an aura of peace shrouded over the city that soothed Arcee's confused, troubling thoughts. She wanted to tell Soundwave what she felt, but she knew it would just end in something awkward. She tried to take her mind off of the matter by admiring the peace before her, or at least _would_ have been peace, had there not been a Cybertronian with malevolent intentions scaling up the building from right behind her.

The green being had crawled silently to the top of the building in a manner akin to an insect. When he reached the top, he crept over the edge as the unsuspecting Arcee continued to watch what went on in front and below her with vigilant eyes. He slowly walked up to her smaller form, hands on his sword's sheaths, and slowly began to take them out of their resting places.

But Arcee was not fully unaware of what went on. Sensing something was amiss, and hearing the grating noise most would easily neglect, she activated her arm blades and spun around just in time, catching the oncoming green swords with them. With some effort, and a grunt, she forced them away, and prepared her next move;

Nimbly, Arcee dodged or parried every swing from the mech's swords, landing several swipes with her blades in the process. Jumping forward suddenly with a shout, she landed a kick on his chest, sending each other back to opposite ends of the rooftop.

They stared at one another for some time. While they had this moment of rest, Arcee couldn't help but notice her attacker bore an uncanny likeness to the Wrecker and her friend, Wheeljack. His body shape, his size, and even the swords he wielded looked like his. The only difference this bot had to him was the shape of his head, his paint scheme, the fact his swords bore an ominous, toxic glow to their edges, and the bright green Decepticon symbol that blazed on his right shoulder.

It took a few seconds, but Arcee finally spoke once she took in a few breaths.

"Who are you, 'Con? Don't tell me you're one of those "silent types.""

The bot didn't reply. Twisting his swords into a more comfortable position, he suddenly charged again, emitting only baleful silence as he began his attack. Arcee braced herself, and once more began to skillfully deflect his weapon's strikes, taking great caution not to take any sword swipes head-on. Upon jumping back and rushing up to her, Arcee was more than ready for him this time, and simply prepared before ducking forward, catching the mech off guard. Then, using his size and momentum against him, she flipped his far larger form over herself, where he only just managed to catch himself on the building's edge.

This time Arcee ran up to him. With a final roar and slash, she sent the Decepticon falling from the tower in a spiral, and listened as she heard him crash on the ground far, far below.

Careful not to slip, Arcee made her own way down to the ground. She jumped from window to window, and to the nearby ledge, from which she was able to drop the rest of the way down. Upon landing, she saw what had happened to her enemy.

The Decepticon lied on his back in the middle of as freshly-made crater, completely limp. His eyes were closed, and he appeared unconscious. Seeing that he wasn't getting back up, Arcee let her guard down and placed a finger to her com.

"Soundwave, are you still there?" she asked into it, taking deep breaths.

" _Yes. Have you found something?_ " he asked on his end, noticing the strain in her voice.

"Someone just attacked me, but I've subdued him," she replied. "It's not Barricade, but it's a Decepticon. I might need some help moving him."

" _I will be right there,_ " he replied, before a concerned thought took over. " _Are you okay? You haven't suffered any damage, have you?_ "

"Not a scratch on me," she said confirmed. "But be here quick, okay?"

As she signed off and walked up to the fallen bot, she placed her hand down to move him to his side. However, the moment it made contact, the Decepticon's body vanished with a fizzing noise, leaving behind the crater in the ground.

 _A hologram?_ Arcee thought in surprise. Reacting to this discovery in the only way she knew it would end, she jumped to her left in an effort to avoid the imminent attack she predicted was coming her way, just as a sword's blade came down on her from behind at a blinding speed. Arcee let out a pained cry as the glowing weapon sliced straight through her arm at the shoulder, severing it completely. The limb dropped flaccidly to the ground, and the shape of the bot, previously cloaked by a field of invisibility, came into view.

Arcee stumbled back, clutching at her wound. Gritting her teeth, she glared back at him.

"My name is Dead End," the bot suddenly spoke, in a disturbingly low and gritty, yet calm tone. "And you know of who I am truly hunting down. For that, I am going to extinguish your spark, Arcee."

"You haven't won yet..." she growled, taking her hand off of her wound and activating its blade. Dead End shook his head.

"My weapons are tainted with driller venom," he replied darkly. "You'll be out for a time if it gets into your system, and while that limb-chopping I did might not have done its proper job, all I must do is scratch you but a single time. And when that happens, I'll savor what I do to you, Autobot. I can smell your bright, brave spark. It _longs_ to be devoured by me, it does..."

Angered by his threat, Arcee leapt at him with a roar. She fought with a ferocity to match a cornered predacon, slashing at him rapidly with her weapon, but maintaining her cool as to not become sloppy. But as energon continued to leak heavily from her wound, she gradually became more sluggish in her attacks and evasion; not to mention her lack of a fourth limb hindered her to a paramount degree. These all added up as Dead End deflected Arcee's blade a final time and landed a tremendous kick on her stomach, sending her against the wall of the building behind her with enough force to dent its surface, and knocking the wind completely out of her.

After falling onto the ground she tried to stand up again, but could only get to her knee. Like an endless stream of blood, her energon was still leaking from her severed arm, a thick blue puddle forming below her; and this was all without mentioning the slick that formed from the battle. Looking up, Dead End loomed over her like a preening vulture waiting for its prey to keel over.

"Don't move," he said, "and I'll make sure you don't die in too messy of a manner. I want your head and spark intact when I'm done..."

"Fat chance for that," Arcee spat defiantly. She got to her legs, determined to make good on her word, but once again sunk to the ground with a grunt as her legs gave out, a fuzzy, hazy feeling overtaking her sensors.

Dead End let a metallic ring fly through the air as he sharpened the blade of one of his swords over the other, sending sparks flying. He then raised the two weapons up, determined to finish her off quickly and without gloating to hinder him, but before he could bring them down on the Autobot, he suddenly halted his attack. Looking up, Arcee saw why he had stopped.

It was Soundwave. He stood behind Dead End, and one of his tentacles was latched onto the back of his head, forcing him to stop in his attempt to harm Arcee. With a quick thrust, his tube-like appendage picked Dead End up effortlessly, brought him away from the Autobot, and slammed him against the wall, then threw him into the air, where he landed with a horrid smashing noise several dozen feet away from both of them. While Dead End still held onto one of his swords in his servo, the other was sent flying from his grasp and landed on the ground nearby with a clatter.

Seeing that he wasn't getting up, Soundwave turned from him to Arcee, quickly dashing up to, and kneeling beside her.

"Arcee?" he asked, his voice noticeably breaking. "Your arm... Are you alright?"

"F-for the moment..." she replied in a weak, but stubbornly firm voice. "I'll be fine. Just make sure Dead End doesn't escape."

"No, you're more important," he argued as he let Arcee grab onto his servo, and gently helped her to her legs. As he spoke, Arcee looked past him and saw Dead End stand up once more. After motioning him to Soundwave, he too looked to the Decepticon.

"You're not serving her out of enslavement as I thought, traitor..." Dead End growled to Soundwave; his already threatening voice sinking deeper in volume. "How could you side with her kind? You are Lord Megatron's most loyal soldier! You have followed our master since he first started his cause!"

"He knows the war is over," Arcee spoke back, as next placed her arm over Soundwave's shoulder for support. "As should you."

Dead End looked to Arcee, then back to Soundwave with his beady, green-yellow eyes. "Even you should know that is a lie that the Autobots created," he bellowed. His eyes then suddenly dilated, as if coming to realization of something, before returning to their previous state. "Oh... I see what has happened to you... I see what has corrupted your judgement..."

Soundwave silently let his brow drop after seeing what he was saying, while Arcee's lifted in confusion. Instead of adding onto his words, Dead End sheathed his sword in a swift move, before letting his arm fall to his side.

"I'll let you two go for now... The next time we meet, I will have something bigger in store..." he spoke in a whispering voice. With the sound of his T-cog activating, he shifted into the form of a car; its resemblance of purely Cybertronian design. The sound of its wheels screeched on the metal ground as it then spun around and fled away with a roaring engine.

"Soundwave, you need to chase him down before he gets away," Arcee immediately ordered, attempting to stand on her own as she let go of her partner. He turned back to her instead.

"Arcee, I _must_ get you to a hospital," he said again, leaving for but a moment to pick up her dismembered arm, before approaching her again.

"No Soundwave, I'm fine. _You_ need to follow him," she replied pertinaciously, snatching her arm from him.

"I can send off Laserbeak," he said once more, as the mini-con in question detached from his chest and hovered into the air, then sped off after their quarry.

"But Laserbeak can't apprehend him!"

"Arcee..." Soundwave said again, grabbing ahold of her good servo. He looked into her blue optics, and she gazed back into his purple ones. Finally, she relented with a sigh.

"Fine! Fine..." she said, before letting out another grunt and placing her filled hand where her still-festering injury lied. "But I can't transform properly without my arm."

"Let me carry you," he offered, stretching a servo out and causing Arcee to give him a surprised look that quickly disappeared. Hesitantly, she placed her arm into his, and he carefully lifted her up, one of his long arms under her legs and the other supporting her back. After making sure she was secure, Soundwave dashed off, but not before letting one of his tentacle reach out and grab Dead End's discarded sword.


	10. Chapter 10: A New Feeling

Arcee flexed out her newly-reattached arm and curled her fingers as she sat on the examination table. Bringing it close again, she punched out into the air, and then felt it with her other servo.

"Thanks again, Knock Out," she spoke to the mech that was currently checking for any imperfections the operation could have made on a monitor he had on the nearby wall.

"Anytime," the ex-Decepticon responded with a small salute, before turning to her with a datapad in his hand. "I must say, you certainly lost a lot of energon in that scuffle. How bad was it?"

"The worst was when he snuck up on me and cut my arm off after deceiving me with a hologram," she replied. "And even when I fought him before that part happened, it was as if he was immune to pain. My blades hit him multiple times, but he didn't utter a sound throughout all of it."

"Who did you say this was, exactly?" the medic decided to ask out of curiosity.

"A Decepticon that said he went by the name of Dead End," she replied "He didn't talk much, but he said enough."

"Oh..." Knock Out mumbled, as if remembering someone not-so-fondly.

"You know something about him?"

"Not much," he shrugged. "Just that he was an experiment of Shockwave late in the war, a few dozen years before we all had to abandon Cybertron. Heard a rumor that he was "volunteered" in a laser core procedure of some sort, and came out messed up in more ways than one."

""Messed up" is right," she spoke. "Unless I'm mistaken, he said he wanted to actually _eat_ my spark."

"Err!" Knock Out recoiled in disgust. "Gritty operations I can handle. Witnessing battlefield carnage I can withstand with flying colors. But nothing... nothing's more disturbing to me than bots that want to rip another bot open and... _do that._ That's just so... _unnatural_."

When the thought of that ghoulish Decepticon passed, Arcee's mind went to Soundwave, provoking another question.

"Do you know if Soundwave's still waiting outside?"

"Yes, he is," Knock Out answered. Arcee lowered her head and looked to the nearby wall as she remembered the somewhat foggy memory of him carrying her here.

"By the way, when he brought you in he was carrying you in the most adorable way," the medic continued with a smirk. "Satisfy my curiosity; are you two in a relationship?"

"What- no!" she quickly snapped back, completely surprised by his comment. "Where in the AllSpark did you get _that_ idea? We're just partners. I have about as much feelings for him as any other bot." After she spoke, Knock Out looked at her spark rate monitor on the wall, which had spiked by a small bit as Arcee now noticed.

"Your spark's vitals just rose by a small measure," he pointed out. "Either you're starting to overheat from a burst of held-back stress... or you're lying."

Arcee's face went blank as a malevolent smile crept onto Knock Out's own. It quickly dissipated when she shot him a death glare, which soon returned to its previous state.

"I think I'll just... go now..." she said, getting up.

"Y-yes, of course," Knock Out agreed, uneasily. "Come back if something feels off in your arm."

"Will do," she replied, exiting the room. After making her way past a hallway and a single, small flight of stairs, she entered the main lobby area. There, on a booth on the adjacent side of the room, sat Soundwave. His head lifted the second he saw Arcee's small blue form out of the corner of his eye, and he stood up upon her approach, showing that Laserbeak was back on his chest. Arcee shot him a smile and showed off her arm.

"Good as new," she chuckled quietly, flexing the repaired appendage out for him to see. He only replied with silence, and Arcee took that as an indication he wanted to leave now. The two exited the hospital and entered a stretch of long, metal road that eventually would lead to the ship.

"Listen, what you did for me was the right thing," she started, a few minutes into their walk. "I lost too much energon to think right, and my mind was too focused on the mission."

"Arcee," he finally spoke.

"Yes?" the two-wheeler asked.

" _I_ was wrong," he began in a smaller voice. "You were still able to think straight, but because I let my fear over your well-being cloud my judgement, Dead End managed to escape."

"What?" she spoke in a shocked voice, stopping in her tracks and looking directly at him. "Don't be so modest, Soundwave. You saved me from bleeding out, and ran all the way over here to do it. That more than counts for something in my book, and either way, you trusted in your feelings."

"Well... I guess it was not a complete wash," he said again. "I was able to grab this before we departed from the spot."

As he spoke, he lifted his right hand and showed her Dead End's sword; the weapon he had been hiding from her sight by keeping it beside his body.

"That's his sword, isn't it?" she asked as they started walking again.

"Yes," he replied. "While you were getting repaired I took some time to scan its wiring, and found that it has a hidden hand-based neural interface in its hilt. It activates its poison emitters if the one matching a certain neural pattern holds it the right way."

"And if you hack into its interface...?"

"If I hack into its neural interface and search for a device that had the same neural code - most likely Dead End's other sword - I can locate where said sword is, and thereby find him. Assuming he doesn't get rid of it, of course."

"So in other words, we have a way to track him down?"

Soundwave nodded, eliciting Arcee to smile. They both walked for a distance longer in silence before arriving at where the _Cliffside_ was docked. Making their way toward it, something Arcee had been thinking of came back to the front of her mind.

"You said you wanted to tell me something that wasn't of major importance while we were surveying the area around Dropshot's apartment," she brought up. "Do you think now is a better time to to talk to me about it?"

"I forgot," he replied, in a manner a bit too quick to not cause suspicion.

"Forgot? Soundwave, when was the last time someone like you forgot something?"

Soundwave inhaled and exhaled deeply. "Arcee..." he began. "Since I took my visor off and talked to you more about myself, I've felt different in my opinion toward you."

"How so?"

"I... I'm not sure how to describe it," he said, his voice brimming with reluctance. "But just being close to you makes me feel... _happy_. When I saw that you were injured, the worst fear I have ever felt came over me."

"What are you... trying to say, Soundwave?" Arcee inquired once more in a much more concerned tone, as both stopped again and looked into each other's eyes. Slowly, the Decepticon took hold of her servo in his own, but she made no attempt to fight it.

"Arcee," he said her name for the third time in a row, softly, as their faces grew closer. "I'm not entirely sure, but as of late I think I... might just be..."

His words stopped just before he could finish. "Nevermind," he whispered, before letting go of her servo and walking off in the direction that lead to the ship. Arcee could only stand there in stunned silence as she saw him leave, her optics wide with shock. Looking to her hand and closing it with a deep breath, she finally recovered and boarded the ship with him.

* * *

"Soundwave is a traitor?" Barricade questioned in a tone of disbelief, folding his arms.

"Yesss..." Dead End hissed, as he marched to a corner of the lair and sat down on the dank ground. "He saved that Arcee character's life as I was about to finish her. I see now that fem has seduced him into becoming ensnared in her web. I can feel it in his spark. He has become _smitten_ with her..."

"Wait, for real?" Barricade asked again, unfolding his arms. "You're sure that Soundwave; a bot that has become legendary for showing as much emotion as a rock, has actually fallen in love with someone? And with an _Autobot?_ "

"I fear so," he responded. "I do not know what has warped his mind into thinking this way, but it has claimed him completely. _That_ I sense in full."

"What do _you_ propose should be done about him?" Barricade wondered aloud. "I personally think we should just offline him before he becomes a problem."

"No... not offline... not yet..." Dead End murmured. "For a treason of this volume, he must be punished. He must _suffer_. He must be tortured until he realizes what he has done wrong..."

"And then?"

"And then..." Dead End started to finish, coldly, as his small eyes began to close. "We will end him. Now, I must meditate on this. I must meditate, and plan for what comes next..."


	11. Chapter 11: Confession

Soundwave ran his fingers over the computer's keyboard as he attempted to compare Dead End's neural configuration with any other weapons on Cybertron. It was a challenge to find something so small on something so large, but he continued to search every small detail of the planet without stopping. As he continued his work, the smaller, blue form of Arcee started to walk up to him from behind.

"Soundwave?" she asked, gaining his attention. Lifting his head, he turned to her with a respectful look to his partner.

"Yes?"

"I wanted to ask you something," she said again. "Do you have the minute?"

"Of course," he replied, pausing his work and signing off. "What is it you need?"

Arcee rubbed the back of her head, letting out a puff of air before speaking, hoping with every fiber of her being that what she was going to say next wouldn't end in disaster. "Do you... like me?" she inquired. The question hit the mech like a punch from a metrotitan.

"Wh-what?" he said in a shocked voice; its deep pitch rising slightly as he just started to make sense of what she asked.

"Do you like me?" she repeated with a more noticeable hint of confidence in her tone, now knowing there was no going back. "As in: do you find me attractive in any way?"

"Arcee, y-you _do_ know of what you are asking, right?"

"Yes, I do. And after that rather confusing action you pulled on me earlier, I want to know the answer to it," she responded, folding her arms and tapping her foot on the ground of the ship as a stubborn look came over her face. "So tell me."

There was silence. The quiet lasted until Soundwave lowered his head in a defeated manner.

"Yes, Arcee," he finally answered, causing the fem's eyes to widen. "What I wanted to tell you before was that I... I do harbor feelings of that nature toward you. I just... didn't know how to say it."

"You... do?" she asked with a curled brow.

"Yes," he continued, putting a hand to where Laserbeak lied, motioning to his own chest. "It took me a while to register exactly what I was feeling in my spark, but when I found out that what I was feeling was true infatuation, I tried my best to hide it from you. I soon realized I couldn't, and so I tried to tell you, but I couldn't do that either."

Arcee's face remained neutral as she processed this newfound information, confirming everything she possibly thought and more.

"And now you know," he shrugged. "Now you know everything."

"What really intrigues me is why," she said with a mischievous look, walking ever so closer to him.

"Because you helped me learn to move on with my life," he began. "Because you treated me with kindness, and as a partner instead of a liability. Even after all I did to help my kind hinder yours in the past, you did this. Even after I forcibly used the cortical psychic patch on you, you did this. For _me_. The only thing I could possibly think of you as being is someone worthy of compassion and respect in the very, very least."

"Yeah, well... _you_ saved my life. _Twice_ ," she chuckled back, placing one of her servos on his side. Just hearing her laugh and feeling her touch made his spark tingle and shiver with a feeling he couldn't describe. "So in my own opinion... I don't think it would be so wrong if I were to return such a feeling too, you know..."

It was at this point that Soundwave finally realized that both of their heads were slowly leaning in as if on their own accord, and their faces were gravitating toward one another's at a tantalizing rate. He fought the urge to just end what he was afraid would come next. In an effort to take his mind off of his thoughts on the very near future, he focused on how palpable moment was, and looked into Arcee's comforting, lovely blue eyes.

At first he felt uncertainty and fear grip his mind and spark, but any negative emotions holding him back were quickly doused like mere candles to a flood and replaced with irresistible desire. Without a second thought, he shut his purple eyes and pressed his mouth against hers, just as she did the same, closing the gap at long last.

While they kissed each other fervently and passionately; fully claimed in the ecstasy and rapture the moment gave the two, the first thing Soundwave noticed upon regaining some semblance of himself was that Arcee's lips seemed to feel impossibly soft and smooth. As their tongues explored each other's mouths, he gently placed a hand on Arcee's back, careful to avoid her wing-shaped protrusions, and pulled her smaller form closer to himself. As Arcee herself placed a servo on his chest, she was wary enough with her fingers not to disturb Laserbeak, and savored the moment.

It was nearly a full minute into that the two finally, albeit reluctantly, separated their lips, taking in multiple deep breaths and staring into each other's optics as they butted their foreheads together.

"Arcee... I-I'm sorry, I didn't mean to... to..." Soundwave spoke in a nervous and apologetic tone as he started to pull his head away. His action was halted as Arcee placed her servos on either side of his face, and brought it back to hers.

"Sorry about what?" she smiled, as she once more locked lips with him, starting another round.

"I... don't... remember..." he spoke back in between kisses. With barely-controllable emotion, the two stumbled a short ways until Arcee's back was pressing against the desk of the computer. To compensate, Soundwave placed both of his hands on the monitor area's edge, while Arcee wrapped her arms around his upper body for support. She let out a soft moan as she felt his mouth wander around and kiss at her neck.

It didn't last long, as Soundwave soon lost his grip on the desk's edge, and the two slipped to the ground with a clatter. They soon recovered and upon sitting up, instead of feeling shamefaced, they started to laugh at their little plight.

But then, as if fate itself was trying to end the moment of bliss for the two, a voice went out from overhead, where the computer lied.

" _Arcee, Soundwave, are either of you there?_ " the sound of what Arcee quickly realized was Ratchet's voice went out. " _Hmm... I don't see either of you, but the monitor senses your life signatures are in this room. Where are you?_ "

 _Oh, scrap! It's Ratchet!_ Arcee thought in a panic, her eyes widening in horror. _Out of all the times to call..._

"Is... that...?" Soundwave began in an unsure tone.

"Ratchet..." Arcee finished in a whisper, futile attempting to keep her cool. "Okay, uh... let's just... play this out. I'll just say that there was... something wrong with the lower panel of the computer and you were helping me. Got it?"

He quickly nodded; his visage becoming much more serious.

"Okay, good. Let's get up in three... two... one."

As her countdown reached its conclusion, the two jumped to their feet

"Hey, Ratchet!" she greeted her friend a bit too heartily with a wave of the servo.

" _What... were you two doing down there?_ " the aged bot asked in an inquisitive voice. Both Arcee and Soundwave traded quick glances toward one another before the two-wheeler let loose a nervous chuckle, arching a hand over her back

"Oh! We were just... fixing one of the computer's panels," she said, making as innocent of a smile as she could muster. "Then my... hand got caught in some of the wiring, and I was afraid of accidentally pulling the wires out, so I had Soundwave come over and help... right, partner?"

Soundwave nodded again in agreement.

" _Well, is everything all good between you and Soundwave?_ " he inquired. " _I'm just calling in again to make sure he hasn't tried anything on you since last time._ "

"Everything's fine," she said. "But listen... if I don't get that wiring fixed up before a chord or two fall out, the computer's entire mainframe is going to go black, so... see you later, I suppose?"

" _Hmph. Since everything seems well, I guess I'll call back in- wait, hold on just a moment... I hooked that computer up myself!_ " he pointed out, causing Arcee's spark to instantly shrink on fear. " _There's no wiring under that section! Hmm... what were you two_ really _do- Oh. Oh, no... P-Primus preserve me..._ "

Arcee bit her lip as both Soundwave and herself saw Ratchet's face hysterically change into one of both realization and horror. " _W-WERE YOU TWO JUS-_ "

The two-wheeler shot her hand down and pressed the button that ended the transmission, then pressing the one that shut the computer down completely, causing Ratchet's face to vanish from the screen. Letting out a large sigh, she gazed back at Soundwave with a small smile.

"Well... Ratchet knows, _heh_ ," she chuckled awkwardly, rubbing the back of her head with a servo. "That was... faster than I thought it would be."

"Arcee, I had no idea he was going to call. I'm sorry for embarrassing you like this..." Soundwave apologized in a sincere tone.

"What? Don't be," she said easily. "I'd be willing to bet that someone would've found out about this sooner or later."

She let out another long-drawn sigh and began to walk toward where the front of the _Cliffside_ was. "I think I'll land the ship for a while. I need some... fresh air," she went on in a weary voice.

"Of course," Soundwave agreed. "I shall... return to my work."

Arcee was about to exit the room, but stopped herself at the last moment and looked back in. "Hey, Soundwave," she spoke.

"Y-yes?" he asked once more.

"Thank you," she said a last time, before disappearing behind the corner.


	12. Chapter 12: Chance Encounter

Arcee drove through Iacon in her motorcycle form, and at a much more rapid-than-usual pace.

 _Out of all the times to call, Ratchet. Out of all the times to call!_ she thought with much anger. Had her face been visible in her alternate form, it surely would have been curled and soured with rage. She drove on as fast as she could in an effort to release all of her pent-up aggression, allowing her engine to roar at an unrestrained and thunderous volume; much to the visible displeasure of passing bots.

Her vexation began to mollify slightly as she decided to take her mind off of Ratchet's interruption, and instead focused all her thoughts on Soundwave. That relatively brief moment of pure, intimate passion she had with him was simply wonderful, and unlike anything she had experienced before. Just thinking of when she saw Soundwave's face and looked into his purple eyes at such a close distance made her spark feel warm with happiness.

A vehicle's shape suddenly caught her eye, snapping Arcee out of her thoughts. Taking greater care and looking to her surroundings with a much more keen interest, a car-shaped object sporting black-and-purple colors came into view just ahead of her.

 _Barricade!_ she thought with alarm. As if not noticing her, she saw the car enter an alleyway nearby. Silencing her motor as best she could, she approached the spot and transformed just outside of it. Peering around the corner, she saw the vehicle transform into a shape she confirmed as belonging to Barricade. As he walked deeper into the passage, Arcee ran around the corner and followed him.

Only after hearing her footsteps a minute into walking did he realize that he was being followed. Turning about, both stopped as they looked at one another's faces; each bearing a cold look.

"Barricade," she spoke, saying the Decepticon's name.

"Autobot," he replied callously, giving a sarcastic but snide smile before extending his arms out. "Come to arrest me, have you?"

"Yes," she deadpanned through her glare, transforming her hands into blasters. Without further prompting, she began to fire several shots at her enemy, sending their blue beams cutting through the air like bullets. Barricade managed to avoid or endure every shot coming his way, and slowly made his way toward Arcee, unfurling his claw-like fingers with a metallic scraping noise.

When he was in range, Arcee put her blasters away and dodged her smaller shape around as he swiped at her multiple times. Trying to find weak points on him, she struck his black-and-purple body several times with her fists to no effect. After narrowly getting out of range from his last swing, she activated her arm blades and struck him well across the chest before rolling away and preparing herself for his next assault.

Barricade ran forward, arms outstretched and roaring in anger. With a swift motion, he enclosed his arms around Arcee before she could react, picking her up in a monstrous bear hug. As Arcee tried desperately to pull herself out, only to feel his two limbs begin to close tighter around her midsection with the intent of crushing her, she saw an opening. The Decepticon had left his face exposed.

Lifting her right arm, she drove her elbow down in a way that hit him in one of his red optics. Bellowing in surprise, he dropped the Autobot and placed a hand where he had been struck. Back stepping a small ways, she got into another combative position, ready to continue the fight.

"Cheap shot..." he growled, rubbing his sore eye as his vision brought her back into his immediate attention.

"Says the 'Con that oh-so bravely decided to ambush a much smaller bot like me," she retorted with a smirk. "What's the matter, can't keep up? Or, should I turn around so you can shoot me in the back when I'm not looking?"

"Cute," he sneered mockingly, bracing his fists for another attack. "You're going to look and sound much less so when I'm through with you."

"Don't count on it," she grimaced. With another roar from Barricade, the two flew at each other. However, right when it looked like they were about to trade attacks head-on, Arcee fell to the metal ground, taking a giant slide that ended with her kicking out Barricade's left leg and causing him to somersault to the floor in a pile. Wasting no time, Arcee rose back up and ran to him with a shout and leaped into a kick.

Barricade shakily got back to his legs, just in time to feel the full force of Arcee's foot slamming against his stomach, throwing him against the wall of a building, and slumping to the ground.

Before he could even recuperate, Arcee had jumped toward him. Seeing her, Barricade tried to swing his arm at her as he sat himself up, but she ducked below the blow. With a viscous uppercut, her blades slashed directly through the unarmored joint where the part of his right arm connected to his body, cutting deep enough not to completely lacerate his arm, but to sever the nerve chords and nodes that allowed him to use the appendage.

"Argh! You... _scrap-eater!_ " he cursed as he felt the burning pain, then watched as his limb went almost fully limp; now unable to be used in battle. He tried to punch with his other, still-usable arm, but Arcee quickly avoided it, and then caught the limb with one of her own arms in a fierce grip. Using her free one, she punched Barricade directly in his defenseless face, stunning him.

Giving him no time to recover, she did it again. Then again. Then again. After her seventh strike landed, she saw he looked nearly out of it, complete with spinning eyes and a dull expression. One more solid blow would be more than enough to knock him unconscious. Reeling her fist back, she prepared to end the fight.

A sudden, sharp pain in her lower back stopped Arcee from delivering the final blow. Reacting to it accordingly, she jumped to the side and faced a familiar, brightly-colored adversary.

Dead End stood there like a phantom, sheathing his sword behind his back. Before Arcee could charge at him, a sudden feeling of muddled dizziness came over her. Just as she groggily sank to her knees in a faint manner did she realize that what she had been struck by was the Decepticon's poisoned blade.

"I have changed my plans for you, Arcee..." the green fiend spoke as his blurry form stood overhead, watching her with his beady, predatory eyes as she began to gradually succumb to the poison. "I no longer need you offline. I need you online, for now..."

"You're... you're going to regret it..." she managed to say. "Even if I... don't escape, Soundwave w-will..."

Before she could finish, her eyes rolled back and she collapsed completely, blacking out.

"Find you? Yes... yes, I am counting on that... very much so," Dead End started to finish for her. "But have no fear my pretty little thing, your time of doom is to come very soon."

He turned his head to his ally. "Barricade, are you still conscious?"

"Yes, but she got me good," he replied in a mutter, trying to move his now-useless arm with his other one. "I'm not carrying her."

"Do not fret about that," he said with a wave of the servo. "Just go back and get her shackles ready. Things are about to come crashing down in the most delicious way for our treacherous friend..."


	13. Chapter 13: Damsel Out of Distress

As the third hour of Arcee's departure went by, Soundwave still stood in front of the computer, but he couldn't find the will to work.

He had never felt emotion of this caliber before. He had never imagined thoughts like what he was currently thinking to be swimming through his head. Just thinking of Arcee, much less that moment the two had, brought powerful, but mixed reception.

He didn't know whether to be frightened or joyful at having this alien feeling pulse around through his body as freely as the energon that coursed through his veins. The only thing he was completely sure of was that it was true, pure, and when he had finally expressed it just a few hours before, it confirmed everything he had hoped. He was in love. He was loved back. He had a reason for living once more, and it was all in the form of that wonderful Autobot.

But something also felt very wrong. Soundwave didn't know what it was, but a gnawing feeling went on in the back of his head every time he imagined seeing her face up close and staring into her eyes. He was still a Decepticon. She was still, and forevermore an Autobot. What he had helped Megatron begin in the past led to the suffering Arcee had to endure, witnessed firsthand by himself. She may have forgiven him as she said previously, but his guilt weighed him down like an anchor. He had never felt such culpability before. Not a week ago, not during the war, and not even before all that, back when he had to kill other bots back as an unnamed gladiator fighting for his life and freedom in the merciless pits of Kaon.

 _Yeah, well... you saved my life. Twice._

The thought of what she said before suddenly rang back into his head, wiping all of his uncertainty away like the wind. That... was correct. He _had_ saved her life. He _was_ sincerely changing from what kind of bot he was before. Everything that happened in the past was in the past, as she also once told him not so long ago.

He was wiping the slate clean, and Arcee was helping him to do it.

As if on cue, Soundwave suddenly felt the comlink Arcee and himself shared activate, and answered it accordingly.

"H-hey, Arcee," he greeted warmly.

" _This isn't your precious "Arcee,_ "" a deep, male voice spoke back in a disturbingly playful pitch. Soundwave's eyes widened and his mouth closed as he heard the words. " _You might remember me as Dead End,_ " the voice went on. " _I'm speaking through your friend's comlink. She's been out for a while, you know..._ "

Soundwave forgot how to speak as he practically felt his spark wither and fade away in terror.

" _You want her back?_ " he asked coldly, seriousness coming into his voice as he began to end the brief conversation. " _Come and find her._ "

The transmission ended, leaving Soundwave in a state of both tremendous fear and shock. "No... n-no... no..." he started to say and repeat, as if in a trance, backing up until he hit the wall. When a few dozen seconds went by, he finally stopped. Dashing to the computer, he inputted some information and found her location. Only one thought raced through his mind now.

 _I'm not going to lose her._

Clenching his fists until they felt sore, he ran to the entrance of the parked ship.

 _I'm not going to lose her._

Bursting out of it, he quickly jumped into the air and transformed into his alternate form, blasting off into the sky as fast as he could go, uncaring if his speed was reckless or not.

 _I'm not going to lose her!_

* * *

Slowly, Arcee felt consciousness return to her. As her eyes slowly opened, the first think she began to notice in her groggy state was that she was hanging in the air somehow, and there were voices coming from nearby.

"...Still can't fix my arm," the first voice said, before the sound of something being thrown away went out. "I need a surgeon for this kind of thing..."

"Well, I'm not a surgeon," the other replied. "Either way, you won't need it. You can just sit back and watch when he gets here."

While the two talked, Arcee, now fully awake, set to work on figuring out her situation. Upon trying to move her arms, she soon came to the realization that her hands were bound to something. Looking up, she saw there were a pair of large, thick metal cuffs around her hands, and those cuffs were connected to two coils of pure energy that hung from a device on the ceiling of wherever she was. Giving her only a small sense of relief, Arcee also felt that her legs were free.

"Well, it appears our guest is awake," a voice she recognized as belonging to Dead End spoke up. Turning her head from her restraints, she saw his green shape approach.

"Sleep well?" he asked.

"Not particularly," she muttered through gritted teeth. "Why are you keeping me alive?"

"The reason? I want to see what's in your head because you know where the one I seek is," he replied.

"And who would that be?"

"A Wrecker by the name of Wheeljack. And as far as I've heard, he's a close associate of yours," he answered, as he reached his arm behind himself and slowly pulled out his sword. Though Arcee glared at him defiantly, she found his answer to be perplexing.

"What's your deal with him?" she inquired. The Decepticon began to reply as he ran a finger across the blade of his weapon, testing its sharpness.

"Long ago, my spark was placed in this body after my real one was damaged," he began, monotonously. "I found out later it was a body cloned after that miserable Wrecker. I was to be made into a living weapon that would surpass that whelp and more. And that's what I plan to do. And thanks to you, my plan is soon to come into fruition."

"Like scrap it will," she muttered, before another question came to mind. "You tried to kill me before to get this information. Why haven't you yet?"

"I said we need you alive _for now_ ," he chuckled; his grating laugh sounding very unsettling, to say the least. "But the point I was about to ironically make is that I didn't say in one piece. As a matter of fact, I was planning on killing two birds with one stone by what I'm about to do next."

He brought his sword back with two hands on its hilt, as if preparing a heavy attack. As he readied to swing, aiming for Arcee's legs, the Autobot thought of her next move quickly. Dead End continued, "If I'm going to make Soundwave suffer for deserting the Decepticons, I can't do it physically, or at least as of yet. I know he's one of the strongest hand-to-hand fighters I've ever seen, and I'm not suicidal enough to face something like that head-on with but a single sword and expect to emerge victorious. Seeing the one he cares so deeply about as a... _quadriplegic_ should dull him down enough for me..."

Then he ruthlessly swung, letting his sword become a green blur as it made its way towards Arcee. But she was faster.

Kicking her legs out at the perfect time, her feet hit Dead End's hands, sending it, and by extension the sword's blade, radically upward. With a shriek of metal, it cut right through the part of the cuff holding one of her arms, deactivating the coil of energy that held it as it severed the wiring inside the device.

As the slab of metal fell from her arm and Arcee transformed it into a blaster, she pointed it at the awestruck Decepticon. He wasn't even able to blink as the Autobot curled her lip into a snarl and sent a powerful blast of energy into his unprotected face, throwing him through the air and onto his back several meters away when it hit. Instantly setting to work, she morphed her arm back to its original shape, and activated her arm blade.

"You crafty devil!" the sound of Barricade's voice shouted out. Looking to him, she saw his shape charging from a short distance. Before he could get too close, Arcee shot her foot out and planted her heel directly into his chin, forcing him back and clutching his hand at where he was hit; shouting out a curse in pain.

With one of her assailants apparently out of action and the other now stunned, she refocused on the other restraint and struck it twice with her blade, breaking it. Fully free, she dropped to the ground like a raindrop. By this time, Barricade had recovered and transformed his arm into a blaster, pointing it at her.

"I don't care how _he_ wants you, I just want you dead now," he growled. "Be a dear and stand still with your hands in the air."

The second he finished speaking, a red bolt of energy exited his weapon. Arcee rolled out of the way, and the shot hit some form of computer equipment behind her with a loud explosion for a noise. Looking to it, she saw bright sparks fly and one of the larger, thicker electrical cords wave about in the air wildly like a crazed snake, crackling with the dangerous, volatile energy it gave off.

This gave Arcee and idea.

She dodged the next shot that came toward her, and ran toward the malfunctioning, damaged machinery, confusing Barricade as he continued his attack. Snatching the thick, rogue wire in one servo, she then charged fearlessly at her attacker. Now knowing her intent, the Decepticon tried to back up as he frantically shot at her more, missing every shot until the point Arcee had come into close range and extended the cord forward to her enemy.

Barricade let out a horrendous cry as the wire's tip hit his chest and seemingly stuck to it; electrocuting him violently. His cry of agony lasted until Arcee felt it was the right time to pull the makeshift weapon back, which was only when small billows of smoke rose from his body, forming a cloud overhead. With a groan, Barricade fell like a tree, face-first, crashing to the ground in front of the fem. Tossing the cord away, Arcee walked toward the other Decepticon to see his condition.

Dead End still did not move. Looking closer, she spotted one of his closed optics was burned out; no doubt from that point-blank shot she performed. One of his hands was open and still, with the handle of the sword lying in it. Arcee quickly remembered her priority, and quit her curious gazing.

"Sweet dreams, you guys," the Autobot bid farewell with a sarcastic salute. As she shifted and contorted into her alternate form and speedily drove away, unbeknownst to her, Dead End's body began to twitch as his fingers started to instinctively curl around his sword's grip...


	14. Chapter 14: Soundwave's Fury

As Arcee continued to drive through the winding, seemingly endless tunnels of equally endless pipelines, she couldn't help but think of just how maze-like this place was, having come to the realization that she was being kept in the tunnels below Cybertron. It was around this point she also remembered she still had her com.

"Soundwave, do you copy?" she asked into it.

" _Arcee?_ " his voice answered on the other end. " _Is that you? Are you alright?_ "

"Yes, it's me," she replied in a comforted tone. "And I'm fine."

" _Thank Primus..._ " he sighed. " _How did you escape from Dead End? He used your comlink to tell me that he had captured you._ "

"He and Barricade underestimated me," she plainly said. "Where are you now?"

" _I've been trying to find my way through here for almost an hour now, but_ _I'm close,_ " he responded. " _As a matter of fact, I'm just a few turns from your current position._ "

Upon making it through the next two turns and the empty passages they possessed, Arcee transformed from her alternate mode as the familiar, tall shape of Soundwave appeared from the corner ahead of her. As both their eyes met and locked onto one another, the Autobot could see him grin in pure joy upon seeing her again.

Arcee smiled back, unaware of the larger shape coming out of invisibility from right behind her.

Soundwave's smile began to vanish as he saw the figure appear. Arcee saw his expression and instantly read what it meant, but before she could turn around, the long, thin shape of a green blade erupted from her stomach like a spike, and a shocked visage overtook her face, followed by a pained shout.

Time stood still in the worst possible way as Soundwave helplessly watched the sight unfold. Staring downward, Arcee lifted her hands and held the blade she was impaled upon until it was rapidly retracted. Looking forward, back at Soundwave, she stumbled forward to him a short ways before falling to her knees, fully revealing the shape of Dead End behind her.

He just stood there as Soundwave rushed forward, embracing Arcee before she could collapse. Slowly, he lowered her form to the ground gently and looked into her eyes as he placed his hand over her own that was covering the wound.

"Soundwave...?" she spoke, her voice growing weaker as energon began to trickle from the corner of one side of her mouth.

"Arcee..." Soundwave said back in a saddened tone. "I... I was too slow..."

"I've... had worse," she tried to say calmly, upon seeing his expression with a heavy spark. "His sword's poison... i-it's what's really going to affect me. I... I'm willing to bet that he missed anything vital."

"You need to save your energy," he urged, as he lifted his servo from her wound, seeing the blue lifeblood that now coated his fingers.

"Don't w-worry about me right now. Just... just kick his aft, okay?" she asked a last time, her voice now soft and breaking. Raising one of her arms, the fem let her hand feel Soundwave's face a single time before falling back to her side.

With a confident smile on her lips, Arcee's head suddenly sank, and she quietly passed out. As Soundwave tried to place her into a better position that would cover her wound as well, along the nearby wall , Dead End loomed behind him, pacing like a jackal.

"Such a pity..." he cackled, barely able to contain himself by the sound of it. "That looked like quite the injury she sustained... I'm willing to bet she won't make it."

Shooting his face to the being that did the deed, Soundwave simply glared at him in eerie silence. There was no emotion in his purple eyes. Just seeing it made Dead End want to take a step or two back, but the Decepticon decided not to heed his instincts. Bracing himself, he lunged forward, thinking Soundwave as utterly unprepared to defend himself.

Shooting out of his abdomen, Soundwave let a tentacle knock the attacking bot out of the air as he slowly stood up. Getting off the ground where he landed, Dead End readied himself for an assault from his enemy, only to see something much stranger happen.

Soundwave was just... _walking_ to him. With a steady rhythm in his steps, he sauntered toward Dead End like a silent ghost. Growling, Dead End decided to run forward and engaged Soundwave directly, starting with an overhead swing. But with every strike he attempted to make, Soundwave let his size betray him and dodged or deflected every single attack that was made upon him with an almost supernatural grace.

With smooth, fluent movements, Soundwave's long, thin arms continued to parry every swipe that would normally have spelled death for less-trained bots. As the seconds dragged on and still no damage had been done to his adversary, Dead End become more enveloped in frustration and rage, making his attacks faster, but sloppier.

Then, after trying to send the sword forward in a stabbing motion, Soundwave sidestepped him and grabbed onto the hand holding the sword with a fierce, unforgiving grip. Soundwave's other arm and tentacles went forward and subdued Dead End as he tried to free himself, and he could only watch what came next. Finally, with a solid, sick crunching noise and a squelch of dented metal, Soundwave crushed Dead End's hand completely in his own, causing him to drop his weapon to the floor and step back.

Silently looking to the damage done in shock, he tried to cover what was left of his hand as his beady eyes looked back at Soundwave, who was only staring back coldly. Picking the sword up from the ground with a tentacle and placing it into his hands, Soundwave let Dead End watch as inspected the weapon, then broke it in half, separating the blade from the hilt with a snap and tossing both parts away without a care.

"You... _Die!_ " Dead End shrieked in anger, charging toward Soundwave with his arms outstretched and his good hand open. Soundwave was not intimidated in the slightest, and when the enraged bot was almost upon him, he shot his hand forward and grabbed him unexpectedly by the throat, holding him in place with a firm action. Despite what action was going on, Dead End decided to try and attack instead of freeing himself.

" _Kill! Traitor!_ " he shouted in a severely choked, but nonetheless frenzied tone as he tried to grab at Soundwave's face. " _Prey! Kill! Spark! Mine!_ "

He stopped his incoherent screaming when one of Soundwave's tentacles crept up from behind him and grabbed at the back of his skull, tearing Dead End off of him and holding him in the air. Lifting him up, Soundwave smashed him face-first into the floor with his appendage, picking him back up only to do it again, and again. Holding him up one more time, Soundwave threw him against one of the larger pipes he saw nearby, denting its surface with his impact.

Recovering quickly, Dead End clambered on top of the pipe. With a mighty leap, Soundwave joined him on top of the object. Both could hear as the river of energon inside of the long, wide tube rumbled below them.

"You won't defeat me, Soundwave..." the fiend bellowed in more of a crazed mutter than an actual voice on his end, closing his only good fist, tightly. "You won't defeat me. When I'm through with you, I'll eat your spark! And when I'm done with you, your precious Arcee will be next! Do you hear me?!"

Dead End found himself even more enraged as Soundwave's appearance didn't change in the slightest. There was still zero fear in his purple eyes. There was no response at all. The manner in which it was done was practically mocking him.

Just as the bot blindly attempted to lunge one last time, Soundwave sent his forehead into a headbutting motion, hitting Dead End directly in between where his eyes connected, dazing him as the metal where he was struck was dented.

Without pause, he stretched his arms out and picked the stunned mech up in his hands with strength that surprised the half-sensible bot, lifting him into the air. With a swift and powerful motion, Soundwave slammed him into the pipe below. Unfinished, he grabbed him again in the same position, lifted him once more, and threw him into it again, damaging the bot as much as the pipeline he was impacting against. As he continued and repeated this action, Soundwave's expressionless face slowly curled into the visage his held-back anger wanted him to express, and he bared his teeth as he vented everything he was currently feeling onto his enemy.

With a final movement of his arms, Soundwave heaved Dead End into the metal below with his most massive force yet, fully breaking through the pipe this time. With a small, blue geyser of energon bursting from the newly-made hole Dead End was thrust completely through, he disappeared into the tubular passage, where he was instantly sucked away along with the energon down its powerful current that went along the extensive path that led through the planet, disappearing from sight in the blink of an eye.

The fight was over. When Soundwave knew this as the truth, he took a deep breath and turned to where Arcee sat. Without a second thought, he jumped off of the pipe and ran to her side. As he knelt over and inspected her body, he saw to his great relief that she was still breathing, albeit shakily. Her wound was still great though, and that worried him intensely.

Picking Arcee up gently, as he did before not so long ago, he began to carry her out of the underground passageway.


	15. Chapter 15: A Tough Decision

Slowly curling her fingers and opening her eyes, Arcee finally awoke. Yawning, she sat up on the hospital bed she lied upon and stretched her arm over her shoulder. Her head ached and she rubbed a hand over it, but the moment she remembered the wound sustained previously, she looked to her stomach, only to see it was fully repaired. After examining herself for injury, she looked around the room, seeing nothing interesting, save a large, single window pane that stretched from one corner of the wall to the other, displaying the city outside.

Getting off of the berth at a snail's pace, she got to her legs, and noted how shaky they felt. Soon getting a firm foothold, she walked to the door of her room, and left it after the object shifted open. The first two things she noticed upon looking into the hall that lied before her was the large shape of Ultra Magnus, and the small, flying form of what she soon knew was Laserbeak; its small, but clear, repetitive, shrill noise giving away who it was. Turning his head after hearing the disturbance the door made, Magnus's expression turned into one of surprise when he saw the two-wheeler standing there.

"Arcee, you're awake," he spoke, as the mini-con noticed her as well and flew up to her. "The doctors didn't think you would be up this soon. You look weary."

"And my head is killing me..." she chuckled, placing a servo to the side of her cranium once again. "How long was I out?"

"Four days," he answered, bluntly. "Knock Out and the other medical personnel attending you told me that you had an abnormal amount of driller venom in your system. They expected you to be inactive for at least a week."

"And that venom was from Dead End..." she spoke quietly, thinking back to the moment she felt that wretched Decepticon's blade run her through from behind. Ultra Magnus cleared his throat before beginning again.

"I personally sent a team down where Soundwave told me he found you, and they apprehended Barricade. But the one both of you referred to as "Dead End" was nowhere to be seen."

"Huh. Where... _is_ Soundwave?" she asked next, looking toward Laserbeak, who was floating right next to her.

"As soon as he found out you were going to fully recover, he left the hospital. I haven't heard back from him since then, and I presume he returned to your ship."

"Then why's Laserbeak here?" she asked next, in a confused tone.

"He tasked the mini-con with delivering something to you upon your awakening," Magnus replied. "He made it clear to me that it was important, and for your eyes only."

She looked back at Laserbeak with a curious expression. After extending her hand toward it, the small, drone-like bot hovered near until it was just over her waiting appendage, and allowed a small, flat, circular piece of technology to drop from a hidden compartment, into her palm. Inspecting it as the mini-con backed off, Arcee realized it was a holoprojector; a common device made for giving messages in the form of short, prerecorded holograms.

Arcee looked back to Magnus, and after seeing him give her a reassuring nod, she and Laserbeak went back into the room she had previously exited from, closing the door behind her. Setting the dial on the device to "play," the fem set it down on the ground in front of her, and watched it begin.

It started as Soundwave's full-sized, transparent, and somewhat hazy form appeared. As soon as it was clear, Arcee saw he had a what she easily noticed was a perturbed expression on his face, indicating that he was going to say something he wasn't comfortable with talking about; as she was more than familiar with by this point.

" _H-hello, Arcee,_ " he greeted, before his visage changed into a more serious one. " _Knock Out told me that you are going to recover perfectly, and that you'll soon be back to your full strength in no time. That has given me relief, and allowed me to confirm the decision I have made that I'm going to tell you next. It's difficult for me to say, and I know that you won't take it well, so that's one of the reasons I recorded this._ "

Lowering her brow in an anxious fashion, Arcee folded her arms and leaned toward his transparent shape in anticipation. Sighing, the hologram of Soundwave finally spoke.

" _I'm... leaving you, Arcee._ "

Arcee's eyes lit up, and her entire expression became one of unadulterated, horrible surprise upon hearing his words.

Soundwave continued, " _I want you to know that this has nothing to do with the relationship we share. This is something I decided to do. I'm taking your advice and... thinking for myself by doing this. I need to find out who I am - who I_ truly _am - and... I've come to the conclusion that to find that, I must go out and do it alone._ "

His hologram turned hesitantly, before looking back. " _I swear by the AllSpark I will return to you, Arcee. I will return to you as soon as I am able, but until I finish my business and put the ghosts of my past to rest, I've decided to let Laserbeak stay with you as company in my stead. It's the only compensation I can think of that acts as a way for you to remember me, and to think of me as being by your side._ "

Arcee shifted a brief, still-shocked glance at the mini-con hovering nearby, who watched her inexpressively. When Soundwave began speaking next, it sounded like he was about to finish his missive.

" _Before this message ends, I want you to know that I owe you everything. You gave me something I never knew I could have, and showed me there was more I could do in life than sit in a corner and rust over something ultimately trivial. I... I_ love _you Arcee. And I hope with everything I have that I get back to you as soon as possible. Farewell for now._ "

The hologram faded and he signed off, leaving the inactive device in front of Arcee. With a troubled expression and out of breath from witnessing what she just heard, she sat down on the berth behind her, turning her head down with a heavy sigh and entering deep thought. When a few minutes of peaceful silence went by, Laserbeak flew up to her in an inquisitive manner; his expressionless, purple visor looking at the Autobot directly.

"Hey," she said to the small bot, turning her head upward to it and flashing a small, diffident smile. "He's... really gone, isn't he?"

The mini-con didn't reply, but she knew he heard her and understood. Lowering her head again and shaking it in full disagreement with Soundwave's decision, she stood up and approached the window nearby, folding her arms again as she watched the blue sky outside shine over the city that was still rebuilding itself from the war.

The sound of the door behind her shifting open caught her attention after several minutes went by, and she turned an eye over her shoulder, spotting Ultra Magnus. Looking back through the window, Magnus began to approach her until he was also facing the window, by her side.

"Was there anything from that recording you wish to talk about?" he asked. "I haven't seen you look so troubled since the war ended."

"Soundwave's gone," she spoke, quietly. "That message he gave me told me so."

"Gone?" Magnus questioned. "Fear not, I will send for some guardsmen to retrieve-"

"No, there's no need for that... he's done everything I required from him," she interrupted, looking to the captain of the Wreckers with a positive expression. "The agreement I made with him is completed. He's free to do what he wills now."

"You're sure of that?" he asked again, inquisitively lowering a brow. "That was quite a short term of service, in my opinion."

Arcee smiled warmly, her entire, chrome face lighting up with her grin. "He helped me enforce the law as I wanted, he saved my life, _thrice_ now I might add, and... I was able to teach him a thing-or-two on a few important qualities he lacked. I think he earned his freedom."

Grunting, Magnus nodded his head as his gaze began to focus on the view more. "What do you think he will do now?" he inquired when the thought came up, as Laserbeak glided over to its new master. Arcee shrugged as she pet the inexpressive mini-con along its spine with a servo.

"I don't know," she began to respond. "But I do know he isn't going to be gone forever."

"How so?" he wondered aloud. The fem began to respond as she silently placed her hand over her chest.

"I can just feel it in my spark."

* * *

 **Author's notes:** Epilogue will be coming soon.


	16. Epilogue: Vendetta

Dead End drove through the empty night street in a run-down way, his dented, damaged engine clogged with filth and making a most upsetting grinding noise. It took him an arduously long while to escape from the pipeline, but he managed to do it. Upon reaching the surface of Cybertron, he had decided to go to a certain location he was once told to visit, should he wish to meet the "Vendetta" contact the now-captured Barricade and himself knew about for a short time.

Approaching the building matching the description he was told of, he saw it was a rundown bar with a forgettable name. Transforming and pushing himself through the door, Dead End slowly made his way to a table, noticing how empty the place looked; save for several bots and mechs. As he took a deep breath, he noticed a fem had begun to walk up to him.

She was a dark-colored fem with a very thin shape. Sticking from her back were three pairs of long, insectoid limbs ending in small, pointed, but no less deadly claw-like protrusions. The details around her head looked reminiscent of possessing a pair of horns spinning about its back, and her face was the eerie color of pale steel, with bright but icy, unfeeling compound eyes of a purple complexion on it.

"Hello," the bot greeted him in a deep voice as smooth as distilled energon, giving a friendly, but at the same time a somehow intimidating, toothy smile. As she grinned Dead End visibly noticed she had a pair of almost fang-like canines showing through her expression. "Mind if I sit here?"

"No," the Decepticon replied. "And if you're wondering the question as to who your identity is, I know who you are, "Vendetta.""

She chuckled upon hearing the name, pulling out a chair and sitting down with him. "Call me Airachnid. "Vendetta" is just an alias to avoid unwanted attention."

"A wise move in this time," he concurred in an understanding voice, before shifting to a better position in his own seat.

"You look... terrible," she said next, holding in the urge to express a taunting chuckle. "What happened to your face?"

"Arcee..." he muttered, rubbing his burned-out optic with his only good hand.

"Arcee? So, you failed to snuff her spark out?" she asked, placing her long, claw-like fingers around her chin, thinking about what the moment must have looked like. "I have to admit, I'm not too surprised about it."

"She had help," he began again, "in the form of one who I thought would be the last to turn against the Decepticons. _Soundwave._ "

Airachnid looked as though she went blank with surprise when she heard the name. "Soundwave?" she inquired, upon recovering and properly registering what he spoke.

"Yesss..." he hissed. "He has been utterly beguiled into helping the Autobots. Seduced by the fem that damaged my eye, and to a point beyond repair and redemption."

More silence came between them. "You're pulling my leg," Airachnid finally said, her tone full of disbelief, and the look she wore conveying good-humored sarcasm. Dead End shook his head in disagreement.

"I cannot believe it myself, but I know it as fact. I even felt it in both of their sparks. They are fully _infatuated_ with one another."

"Well... well, well, well..." the spider-like Decepticon spoke, rubbing her hands together with a small, visible hint of glee in her purple, compound eyes. "So you're saying that those two are a pair? Of all the bots I'd imagine Arcee attempting to replace Cliffjumper and Tailgate with, Soundwave wasn't among them."

"You sound rather happy. Why?" Dead End asked, turning his head curiously.

"I have a long-lasting rivalry with that particular Autobot, and a bit of a grudge with Soundwave," she spoke, as she examined her claws with a small gleam of excitement in her eye. "It's indeed good news to hear that they have become sweetsparks, despite how unbelievable it sounds. It just means that there is more of an opportunity to watch one suffer the worst pain possible with much less effort. Trust me, I know how to make something like that happen in the most delicious way, and I've already got an idea in mind for Arcee..."

"I've heard it's hard to trust you," Dead End said. "While it may not have been for the same reason as Soundwave, you turned against Megatron as well."

"Only because my interests for who should lead the Decepticons was... _elsewhere,_ " she said. "The Decepticons exist based partially on the term "survival of the fittest," correct?"

"That is true..." he sighed. "I guess the only thing to look forward to now is how we, together, can make that Autobot and that traitor pay for what they have done."

"I may have a plan for that," Airachnid brought up in in ominous voice, as a thought came to mind. Dead End narrowed his optics as he heard her.

"What do you propose?"

"I know of someone that can lend us aid..." she started, leaning her head in and dulling her voice to a whisper. "One that helped me out a short time ago with a terrible problem I ran afoul of."

Dead End bent his head forward as well, intent on hearing what she had to say next. "By all means... do tell."

* * *

 **Author's notes:** Thank you all for reading! The sequel will be out within the week.


End file.
